Removing the Criminal Record from Public View: Low-Wage Labor and the Enactment of a Good Self

• In Event: 477 - Section on Crime, Law, and Deviance Roundtable Session
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 06. Procedures and Justice 1

Abstract

In this article, we use what researchers have recently learned about the criminal record’s impact on employment to contribute to knowledge about the lived experiences of the criminally labeled. Drawing on interviews with expungement seekers (n= 53), we show that individuals are motivated to conceal the criminal record from public view primarily because they view it as an obstacle to finding employment in the covered (formal) economy. At the same time, for our participants, the desire to find employment represented not just an attempt to survive financially, but also to validate and enact a moral self that has been tainted by contact with the criminal justice system. In analyzing these findings, we propose that, for marginalized populations, the realities of the low-wage labor market and the ubiquity of criminal justice contact have profoundly shaped prevailing constructions of the “good self.” We conclude by examining the implications of participants’ accounts for scholarly treatments of labeling and stigma, and for the construction of selfhood within the neoliberal context more broadly.

Authors

• Simone Ispa-Landa, Northwestern University

• Charles Loeffler, University of Pennsylvania