“$40 to Make Sure”: Commonsense Risk Management and the Proliferation of Criminal History Background Checks

• In Event: Rethinking Prisoner Reentry

Abstract

Criminal background checks are used widely in the U.S. to screen applicants for employment, licenses, housing, and government benefits. State and federal lawmakers instituted many of these background check requirements, ostensibly with the aim of managing criminal risk in various areas of social life. While background checks have proliferated in recent years, this process of diffusion remains opaque to scholars of punishment. We know little about how lawmakers determine what types of social activity to target with background check requirements. This study examines legislative discourse in the Illinois General Assembly as lawmakers debated 120 new background check requirements between 1977 and 2013. The paper shows that lawmakers consistently framed background checks as a commonsense, low-cost technique of public protection that would have been effective in preventing prior, highly publicized incidents of crime. The logic of proliferating background checks became self justifying, as lawmakers argued that broader background check coverage was needed to prevent criminals from exploiting gaps in existing laws. At the same time, by defining the low cost of background checks in narrow budgetary terms and deploying emotionally laden anecdotal appeals, lawmakers avoided serious evaluation of the laws’ contributions to public safety and their exclusionary impacts on ex-offenders.

Author

• David McElhattan, Northwestern University