“Ban the Box” Helps Ex-Cons Find Work, but May Hurt Prospects for Law-Abiding Blacks

A major new study highlights employers’ racial biases.

iStock/Kyoshino

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


As a bipartisan consensus on the need for criminal justice reform has solidified in recent years, one of the changes advocates have pushed for is “banning the box”—that is, removing from job applications the box people must check if they have had a felony conviction. Ban-the-box laws don’t prevent employers from asking applicants about a criminal record, but rather delay the questioning until later in the process, after an applicant has made it past that first hurdle. The idea is that applicants with criminal records can then get an honest opportunity for consideration, as opposed to being eliminated from the get-go.

Ban the box has also been touted by civil rights groups as a way to reduce unemployment among young black men (who disproportionately have criminal records) and thereby to lessen the racial employment gap. Twenty-three states have passed ban-the-box laws that apply to public employers, while nine also apply the policy to private employers. Last November, President Obama directed federal agencies to remove the box from applications for federal gigs.

The study examined callback rates for fictitious applicants for about 15,000 entry-level jobs.

A new study, however, suggests that while banning the box helps applicants with criminal records, it may actually hurt applicants of color who don’t have one. Conducted by Sonja Starr, a professor at the University of Michigan Law School, and Amanda Agan, a professor of economics at Princeton, the study examined callback rates for about 15,000 job applications. The fictitious applicants were 21-22 years old, with similar educational backgrounds and employment histories. They sought employment in actual low-skill, entry-level positions in a variety of industries at 4,300 business locations in New Jersey and New York, both before and after each state adopted its ban-the-box law in 2015.

For the applications, the researchers used real names—selected using New Jersey and New York birth certificate records and data on race and name association—that were suggestive of one race or another. Before the ban-the-box laws were enacted, 39 percent of the employers in question asked about an applicant’s criminal history, but they could no longer do so because of the law. Those employers called back 10.5 percent of all black applicants and 11.2 percent of all white ones before ban-the-box. But afterwards, overall callback rates dropped for black applicants and rose for whites—widening the racial callback gap from a mere 7 percent to 45 percent. That’s despite the fact that callback rates for both black and white applicants with felony convictions rose between 1 and 2 percent after ban-the-box.

Why, then, did overall black and white callback rates move in opposite directions? Because black applicants with no criminal record got fewer callbacks, while white applicants with no record—like white ones with a rap sheet—got more, the study found.

“There’s lots of research showing that Americans draw assumptions that associate blackness with criminality.”

The results suggest that, in the absence of the box, employers are simply making racist assumptions, Starr says. “There’s lots of research showing that Americans in general have implicit biases—draw assumptions that associate blackness with criminality,” Starr says. “And we think that assumption is meaning that when a black man with a criminal record isn’t able to tell the employer that he doesn’t have a criminal record, that at least some employers are going to hold that against him.” Likewise, the assumption that white people are less likely to have a criminal record benefits white applicants who have a criminal history, but don’t have to immediately disclose it.

The upshot, the researchers found, was that removal of the box actually substantially widened the racial gap in callbacks. After the laws took effect, white applicants were 45 percent more likely than their black counterparts to get a callback.

But these findings aren’t necessarily an indictment of ban-the-box policies, Starr says: In the real world, the net effect on black employment would vary according to the proportion of black applicants with criminal histories. (In the study context, those with criminal records did, after all, get more callbacks in the box’s absence.) Yet the results “also illustrate a big downside: that the cost of opening the door to people with records may be borne by another disadvantaged group—especially young black men, or people whom employers are going to make these assumptions about.”

Whether you give more weight to the advantages or the disadvantages, she says, depends on what problem you are trying to solve. “If advocates and policy makers are thinking about ban-the-box as a racial justice measure—as a way to reduce racial disparities in employment—then I think that our study provides pretty good evidence that it’s not a good strategy.” But if it’s intended as a measure to help people with criminal records specifically, then “you might say that it’s worth it.”

It might also be possible to mitigate the downside of ban-the-box, Starr says, while maintaining the positive effects: “Maybe if ban the box were combined with some sort of more effective strategy for enforcing our hiring-discrimination laws—because of course racial discrimination in hiring is illegal—then maybe the downside we’re talking about wouldn’t happen.” One option, she adds: Eliminating the names of job applicants’ from the application.

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate