The Mark or Trace of a Criminal Record: A Survey Experiment of Race and Criminal Record Signaling

• In Event: Understanding and Addressing Discrimination in Employment against Individuals with Criminal Records

Abstract

Discrimination based on a criminal record is a salient social fact in the United States, as evidenced by a robust body of experimental audits. Our study reviews prior criminal record hiring experiments—comprising in-person audits, online audits, and opt-in surveys—to describe patterns over time in employer receptivity to applicants with criminal records and to applicants of color with criminal records. We then describe a new nationally representative, experimental survey of employers that measures how differences in the criminal record signal impact the criminal record-employment relationship. Our results reveal a substantial hiring penalty for an official criminal record (conveyed by a background check included in the applicant’s portfolio), with a smaller but still significant penalty for an unofficial criminal record (an internet search engine “hit”). The experiment also shows that the official criminal record penalty is significantly larger for White applicants than Black applicants. Although the latter finding was counter to our hypotheses, it is less surprising in the light of our audit review, which reveals a closing racial gap in the criminal record penalty over the last 20 years.

Authors

• Sarah Lageson, Rutgers University - Newark

• Robert Apel, Rutgers University - Newark