Local Labor Market Conditions and Recidivism: An Analysis of State-Level Labor Market Changes Over Time and Parolee Recidivism

• In Event: Recent Perspectives on Employment and Crime

Abstract

Over 50% of all firms in the U.S. employ methods of assessing an applicant's riskiness through a criminal history record check (Holzer, Raphael, & Stoll, 2004), thus generating public concern about the exclusion of individuals with records from the employment market (Rodriguez & Emsellem, 2011). Also contributing to this issue is that individuals with criminal histories often lack the hard and soft skills that employers find desirable (which may be because of, or simply associated with, prior incarceration) thereby further restricting their realistic employment opportunities. For these, and other manifold reasons, individuals with records tend to pursue two primary employment markets: 1) low-skill and low-education jobs or, 2) illegal forms of employment (e.g., drug sales, selling stolen items). The current study concerns the first pattern and examines the degree to which the overall "health" of the low-skill and low-education labor market influences recidivism patterns among parolees released from New Jersey correctional institutions from 1992 to 2012. We capitalize on movement of parolees from and to "healthy" (or "healthier") markets to identify the effect of local labor market conditions on the likelihood of recidivism. Results and policy implications will be discussed.

Authors

• Samuel E DeWitt, University of North Carolina - Charlotte

• Michael Ostermann, Rutgers University, Newark

• Robert Apel, Rutgers University, Newark