Stigma and Labor Market Disconnection: Criminal-Record-Based Risk Control, Its Effects on Employment Opportunity, and Efforts to Overcome Related Workforce Disconnection

Session Submission Type: Complete Thematic Panel

Abstract

Although the widespread use of criminal records in the United States has received increased attention, the emergence of the modern U.S. criminal records system has received less examination. Firstly, this rise is examined by analyzing professional discourses about criminal records, risk and dangerousness between 1900 and 1940. In the Netherlands criminal-record-based employment screenings have increased considerably in the last two decades and are now used for all kind of jobs. Secondly, qualitative ethnographic research demonstrates how the construction of risk creates exclusive policies and attitudes of social control agents, resulting in stigmatization of young adult ex-offenders, which leads to self-exclusion from the labor market. Thirdly, U.S. policy and program approaches to overcoming workforce engagement barriers are reviewed as well as strategies programs use to usher justice-involved young adults back into the workforce. Moreover, current policies are examined which intend to reverse disconnectedness among high-risk young adults. Finally, there is a long history of using the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth to study the relationship between criminality and criminal justice involvement and both on their relationship to employment. Correcting for the attrition and sample design will likely lead to better estimates of mean and variance in their relationship from the NLSY.

Sub Unit

• Area VII: Criminal Justice Policy and Practice / 35: Challenging Criminal Justice Policies

Individual Presentations

• Advocates for Risk: The Rise of the Criminal Record in the United States, 1900-1940 - Charles Brackett, University of Massachusetts Boston

• The Impact of the Stigma of a Criminal Record on Young Adult’s Position on the Labor Market - Elina Kurtovic, Utrecht University

• Program and System-Level Approaches to Overcoming Workforce Disconnection for Justice-Involved Young Adults - Sarah Jalbert, Abt Associates Inc.

• Revisiting the Effect of Criminal Justice Involvement on Employment using the NLSY - Ryan Kling, Abt Associates Inc.

Chair

• Ryan Kling, Abt Associates Inc.