Should It Even Be a Question? Criminal History Admissions Considerations and Campus Crime in Louisiana

• In Event: 3222 - Section on Crime, Law, and Deviance Refereed Roundtable Session
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: Table 02. Felon Status and Access

Abstract

Discrimination on the basis of criminal history is widely documented in the areas of employment, housing, and access to services (Pager 2007; Oyama 2009; Sugie 2017). Less discussed are the barriers that people with convictions face in higher education. Higher education has been shown to reduce recidivism by as much as 40%, yet in 2017, 70% of colleges in Louisiana asked applicants to disclose their criminal history on initial applications. While this practice is widely used, little is known about the link between criminal history admissions considerations and campus crime. This study used Campus Safety and Security data from 2001 to 2015, College Board Annual Survey of Colleges 2015, as well as a measure of criminal history consideration obtained from each college’s 2017 application, in order to explore factors related to campus crime rates. A multiple regression analysis with random effects estimators was used to determine the relationship between campus crime and criminal history considerations, as well as other possibly relevant campus characteristics. The study finds that criminal history considerations are not significantly related to reported campus crime rates at four-year colleges in Louisiana. Factors that are positively related to crime rates are the percent of students living on campus and the percent of students originating from out of state.

In 2017, the findings of this study coupled with research regarding the positive impacts of higher education for individuals with criminal convictions, were used to inform legislators and the general public to support the passage of LA ACT 276 which made Louisiana the first state in the nation to remove criminal history considerations from college admissions processes statewide. In 2018, at least three states are considering similar legislation. Future researchers should replicate this study to inform the dissemination of “ban the box” in college admissions policies nationally.

Author

• Annie L. Freitas, Tulane University