Full Citation
Title: “The New Jim Crow:” Employer Access to Criminal Record Information and Racial Differences in Labor Market Outcomes
Citation Type: Miscellaneous
Publication Year: 2022
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Abstract: Having a criminal record and employers having access to that record pose a severe barrier to employment and other beneficial labor market outcomes. Recent research has primarily focused on evaluating Ban-the-Box policies implemented after 2000 that limit employer access to this information in hopes of improving outcomes for people with records. However, the initial labor market consequences of making this information available to employers starting in the 1970s has yet to be studied. In this paper, I use variation in the timing and geography of employers’ inaugural access to criminal record information via state central repositories to estimate the e↵ect on labor force participation and employment for various race-gender-education groups. I find that employer access to criminal record information led to decreases in labor force participation (4pp) and employment (1.3pp) of non-college educated black men. However, these declines were o↵set by increases for whites, chiefly white women. These results imply that employer access to central repositories had two e↵ects: One, it pushed noncollege educated black men with criminal records out of the labor force by discouraging job seeking. Two, it potentially helped non-college educated black men without criminal records get jobs due to information flow and reduced competition. While, I am unable to explicitly test this in my study, it is consistent with the literature on racial discrimination and criminal record information.
Url: https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/laurenrussell/files/jmp_12.21.2022.pdf
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Authors: Russell, Lauren
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Data Collections: IPUMS CPS
Topics: Crime and Deviance, Labor Force and Occupational Structure, Race and Ethnicity
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