Is a criminal history a life sentence in the labor markets

JAY LINDSAY:

The day Sarah Rehman resolved the last of the criminal cases against her was also the day she got fired.

At the time, Rehman, a licensed psychologist, had a stellar work record. She'd performed well, with no write-ups, no discipline - even though her five years at the job had also spanned her run-ins with the law.

Her trouble started in 2016 with a drunk-driving arrest, including a child endangerment charge because her 10-year-old son was with her. Most recently, she'd been charged with resisting arrest.

She'd been in and out of county jail. The worst of it was seven months at a "workhouse." But she kept her job through a work release program.

SARAH REHMAN:

From the time that I'd wake up, I would go out, I would leave for work, I would come in. And whenever you came back, you'd do a strip search, you would change back into the jail clothing, and you would be in a cell.

JAY LINDSAY:

Sarah kept no secrets. Her supervisor knew about her troubles. The day they fired her, she was several months into sobriety and getting things on track.

But that day, she'd also told her employers about a new agreement to reduce the charges against her from felonies to misdemeanors - if she had no problems for two years.

The offense would still be on her record, and Sarah figures that's why she got a call from human resources telling her they were letting her go.

SARAH REHMAN:

I think they were just waiting for the opportunity to say, "No, this is it, we're done."

I think there is a lot of stigma around having a criminal history, having a background, and I don't think they wanted to take that on.

JAY LINDSAY:

I'm Jay Lindsay and this is Six Hundred Atlantic, a podcast produced by the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston. This season, we're looking at the concept of "full employment," which - along with "stable prices" - makes up the so-called "dual mandate" given to the Fed by Congress. Basically, the Fed is required to promote both parts of its mandate.

The Boston Fed's 67^th Economic Conference explored the full employment half of its mandate, and one way it did this was by looking at groups who face significant barriers when trying to reach their working potential. People with criminal histories - people like Sarah - make up one of those groups.

Research consistently shows that employers have a clear bias against hiring people with criminal histories. This hesitation may be understandable, but it's not always rational.

For instance, a person convicted of check forgery is likely a different job candidate than someone convicted of arson.

A 28-year-old who just got out of prison for aggravated assault is likely not the same kind of prospective employee as a 35-year-old who committed a drug offense 14 years earlier.

But when it comes to candidates with criminal histories, employers don't necessarily make those distinctions. And that can leave many potentially productive workers without jobs or underemployed.

One reason the employment barriers faced by ex-offenders matter is that they make up a significant portion of the population. Here's Boston Fed senior economist Osborne Jackson.

OSBORNE JACKSON:

There is a high level of involvement in the criminal justice system in the U.S. that is high both in terms of this time period and high relatively across other nations.

JAY LINDSAY:

The numbers may be surprising. Consider these stats:

• Roughly 3% of the U.S. population is currently incarcerated or formerly incarcerated.
• 13 percent of adult males have a felony conviction.
• And some research indicates that, at any given time, half the unemployed have criminal histories.

Steven Raphael is an economist from the University of California at Berkeley who presented a paper at the conference. He says people who have paid the price for their crimes shouldn't have to keep paying.

STEVEN RAPHAEL:

We're a country where it's expected of adults that we work and that we earn in the labor market to support ourselves and support our families and people that depend on us.

So, we don't necessarily want something that someone is arrested for and convicted for, is punished for, to then have collateral consequences that carry through for the rest of their lives.

JAY LINDSAY:

Boston Fed Research Director Egon Zakrajšek says society also pays a price when people who have criminal histories can't participate in the labor force to their full potential.

EGON ZAKRAJSEK:

The benefits of participating is not just the paycheck, right? It's building of the social network, of developing connections, of feeling actually part of a society of, of building your human capital. This you learn, right, through interactions? It's a possibility to advance. I think this is particularly true with, with people who have had contact with the criminal justice system.

So, if they have been cut out, they have not developed their skills, they're at a higher risk of recidivism. Right? So, connecting them with the labor force in meaningful employment minimizes the chances that they will again end up in this sort of a rotating circle of in and out of a prison, right?

That is not a good outcome. That's, that's a real waste of resources.

JAY LINDSAY:

This underutilization of resources has grown over recent decades. Raphael says we can't overlook the role that public policy - dating back to the 1970s - has played in creating a large class of people with criminal histories.

STEVEN RAPHAEL:

So, one of the things that I think research has clearly established is that the magnitude of the criminal justice system and the correctional system in the United States expanded greatly starting in about 1975, and then peaking around 2008, 2009. And that doesn't necessarily reflect higher levels of offending, but it reflects our tougher sentencing policy and changes in, basically, what we were deeming felonies, what we were deeming offenses that were appropriate with a prison sentence.

So, we used prison more extensively, we had a war on drugs that captured a lot of people and saddled them with felony records and, as a result, we have issues, right, surrounding the criminal justice system that are somewhat the creation of our policy choices. So, I think … we do want to try to address the fallout of that policy history.

JAY LINDSAY:

Bias by employers against people with criminal histories is demonstrated over and over in research.

For instance, researchers will send out fictitious resumes with identical qualifications, except one applicant has a criminal history. And, invariably, that applicant gets fewer callbacks.

But employer reluctance is not the only reason that people with criminal histories struggle in the job market. They can be relatively harder to employ for reasons that have nothing to do with their involvement with the criminal justice system.

As Raphael points out, people with criminal histories also tend to have lower levels of education and work experience.

And Jackson says people with criminal histories who've actually been in prison have a higher prevalence of substance abuse. There are also higher levels of physical and mental health problems.

OSBORNE JACKSON:

So, these are all things that could both be independent, completely unrelated to institutionalization and the risk of being involved with the criminal justice system or may be the result of it. It's difficult to disentangle those two things.

JAY LINDSAY:

Efforts to try to make it easier for someone with a criminal history to find work have tended to focus on getting past the stigma that comes with it. The results of these efforts have been mixed, and they have flat-out backfired at times.

One popular approach forbids employers from asking about a person's criminal history until later in the interview process.

At that point, the applicant has presumably had a chance to establish their fitness for the job with a clean slate. So, theoretically, that helps them overcome any bias that could be introduced when the employer learns about their record.

The approach is known as "ban the box" because one way it works is to remove the "box" job seekers are sometimes asked to check off on applications if they have a criminal history.

It's a popular approach. Jackson notes 37 states and more than 150 cities and counties have adopted it. But evidence suggests it doesn't work.

Here's Boston Fed senior economist and policy advisor Chris Foote, who helped organize the conference.

CHRIS FOOTE:

Many people who've researched this topic now believe that "ban the box" policy, although it has a good intention, is ineffective. And it may actually have negative consequences.

JAY LINDSAY:

That's because when employers who are screening applicants are denied this information, they tend to fill it in on their own. And some rely on stereotypes about high criminality in certain racial groups. Then, they don't consider candidates from those groups.

For instance, Raphael says that some evidence shows that "ban the box" policies have resulted in Black males who don't have records being eliminated for consideration from some jobs.

Raphael says a more promising alternative approach uses some kind of "certificate of rehabilitation." These are given to individuals who've demonstrated a commitment to straightening things out - and after a certain period has gone by since their offense.

That's because it's well-known in criminology that the chances a person will re-offend drop precipitously as time passes since the offense.

Besides attesting to a person's fitness for work, the certificates sometimes also legally protect employers from negligent hiring claims. It all aims to try to make hiring people with criminal histories a lot less risky for employers.

Jackson notes that both "ban the box" and certificates of rehabilitation focus on impacts after a criminal history is established.

Maybe, he says, it makes sense to focus on the front end before people ever get involved with the criminal justice system.

Do our laws snare too many people in the system, without making society safer? Could they be reformed, so we can preserve public safety, but also reduce the size of the system, so fewer people have a chance to get branded by it?

OSBORNE JACKSON:

All these policies are kind of taking that interaction with the criminal justice system as a given, and then thinking about ways to try to reduce the negative effects of that interaction. But we could also take this one step back and think about, "Well, is there a way to actually try to reduce the interaction with the system itself?"

JAY LINDSAY:

Sarah Rehman's interaction with the system began with her first arrest in 2016, when she was in her late 30s. But the groundwork had been laid decades earlier.

Sarah grew up on a dairy farm in northeast Wisconsin, got straight As, went into a prestigious field, and generally seemed to have things together.

But she was struggling. Her alcoholic father abandoned her family when she was 2, and her mom was beset with depression and anxiety throughout Sarah's childhood.

SARAH REHMAN:

And I think that just had an impact on me where I felt abandoned, I felt rejected, and I really tried to fill that hole with relationships and with alcohol ultimately.

JAY LINDSAY:

Sarah swore off alcohol after her first arrest, but she couldn't keep the promise. Her alcohol abuse was at the root of her subsequent arrests - which led to her sentence in the workhouse.

But she worked to put it behind her, and it was devastating when she was fired. Then, she felt the shame of not being able to find work in her field.

SARAH REHMAN:

I would have interviews, they would be wanting to hire me, and then, when I would talk about my background, in regard to my justice-impacted background, it wasn't a fit.

And that got very... It was very hard to deal with.

I know for me, it was always a dance of, I want to interview, and I want them to know my experience, my passion. And where do I share my criminal history in this? Do I share it right up front, and risk them saying, "Absolutely not," from the very beginning?

JAY LINDSAY:

Sarah has since gotten part-time work as a psychologist. She has also volunteered for years for Prison Fellowship, a Christian organization that helps prisoners and ex-offenders rehabilitate and adjust to post-prison life.

She says it's critical to remember that the vast majority of people who've been incarcerated return to the community. They need to be seen as part of the community. And that often means they need a fair chance to work in that community.

SARAH REHMAN:

That's very important, because these people aren't different than us. These are our neighbors, these are our sons, our daughters, our brothers and sisters, our parents, our friends, whatever that would be. These are the people that are coming back. And to have a safe community, we need people to feel invested, we need them to be productive, and we need them to be able to support themselves and their families.

JAY LINDSAY:

This final episode of Season 6 highlights a group that can't work to its maximum potential - just as we did in Episode 2, when we spoke to women who've stepped back from careers to care for their kids.

The group we looked at in Episode 3, gig workers, isn't facing the same kinds of barriers to work. But their contributions to the economy aren't being fully seen.

All of it impacts the Fed's pursuit of the full employment mandate. And the 67^th Economic Conference looked at additional angles of that pursuit we didn't take up here. Videos of the conference sessions are all available on bostonfed.org.

Zakrajšek says full employment will never be a place the economy just settles into. It's an evolving concept that policymakers will need to constantly examine and refine as the Fed pursues it.

EGON ZAKRAJSEK:

In some sense, it's a work in progress. But it's a desirable progress. It's not impossible, but it just means we have to have better economic measurements. We have to make sure that we look at pockets of the economy to, to really get a comprehensive picture of the labor markets.

We have to have good conferences and research to tackle those questions, different approaches. And with that, we will learn how to gauge conditions in the labor market in a more comprehensive way and therefore begin to articulate and flesh out this notion of what the full employment is. But understanding that it's an evolving concept, that it's not a static immutable type of concept, but it will be really, really evolving with the economy.

So, it's, it's a challenge. It's an intellectual challenge. It's a policy challenge, but it has enormous, enormous social benefits.

JAY LINDSAY:

Foote emphasizes it's all much more than an academic exercise. He says we can't forget that the Fed's pursuit of the dual mandate is ultimately not about data and discussions. It's about people.

CHRIS FOOTE:

If you have stable prices, that's going to make your economy work better than if you have a high and volatile inflation rate. And when the economy works better, then that allows people to find the jobs that they can fill that allow them to meet their potential. Firms are on a solid footing, sort of in thinking about planning for the future. They can hire workers feeling confident that their businesses are on a sort of a stable foundation. And so, it all fits together in that sense. But what fits together is how the two mandates generate an economy, or that help generate an economy, where individuals can live the economic lives that they want to.

JAY LINDSAY:

Thanks for listening to Season 6 of Six Hundred Atlantic. You can find interviews and our first five seasons and subscribe to our mailing list at bostonfed.org/six-hundred-atlantic. And we'd love it if you would rate, review, share, and subscribe to Six Hundred Atlantic on your favorite podcast app.

The producers would like to thank our contributors for their time and insights. They are Chris Foote, Osborne Jackson, Steven Raphael, Sarah Rehman, and Egon Zakrajsek.

Six Hundred Atlantic is a Federal Reserve Bank of Boston podcast hosted by Jay Lindsay, Allison Ross, and Amanda Blanco. It's produced by Jay Lindsay and Peter Davis. Executive producers are Lucy Warsh and Heidi Furse. Recording by Steve Osemwenkhae and Peter Davis. Engineering by Steve Osemwenkhae, Michael Konstansky, Allison Ross, and Meghan Smith. Project managers are Nate Clark and Peter Davis. Chief consultant is Chris Foote. This podcast was written by Jay Lindsay and edited by Chris Foote, Darcy Saas, Nick Brancaleone, and Daniel Cooper. Graphics and website design by Meghan Smith. Production consultants are Mike Woeste and Nick Brancaleone.

This has been "Rethinking Full Employment," the sixth season of the Boston Fed's Six Hundred Atlantic podcast.

Public link

Please use the above public link if you want to share this noodl on another website.