Weiss Deborah M, Dawson William, McKinley Ronald, Webster Lee
Center on Law, Business, and Economics, Pritzker School of Law, Northwestern University, Chicago, Illinois, United States of America.
University of Texas Medical Branch, Galveston, Texas, United States of America.
PLoS One. 2025 Apr 16;20(4):e0320736. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0320736. eCollection 2025.
Many United States jurisdictions have enacted Ban-the-Box (BTB) laws that are intended to improve the employment prospects of individuals with criminal records. The best-known feature of BTB statutes is a "screening ban:" employers cannot inquire about a criminal record until they have made a conditional offer of employment. Many BTB statutes contain a less well-known "use prohibition:" employers cannot withdraw a conditional offer based on a criminal record unless that record is sufficiently related to fulfillment of potential job duties. In this paper we provide the first evidence of the association of BTB policies with variation in the progression of candidates through hiring phases after the screening process. We use unique applicant-level data obtained from an employer before and after it voluntarily implemented a BTB policy. We find that the enactment of the BTB policy has little or no association with the rate at which individuals with criminal records survive the candidate assessment process and receive conditional employment offers. Indeed, our findings suggest a modest indication of a negative association between the implementation of BTB policies and the hiring of individuals with prior convictions for specific offenses. The observed pattern could be explained if, after losing access to criminal history, employers increase their reliance on hiring criteria that are correlated to criminal history. We also find that the rate at which individuals with a criminal record survive a final background check does not change after the implementation of the joint BTB policies. We find weak evidence that implementation of the two BTB policies is associated with worse outcomes for individuals with records of more serious offenses.
美国许多司法管辖区都颁布了“禁止询问犯罪记录”（BTB）法律，旨在改善有犯罪记录者的就业前景。BTB法规最著名的特点是“筛查禁令”：雇主在发出有条件录用通知之前不得询问犯罪记录。许多BTB法规还包含一个不太为人所知的“使用禁令”：雇主除非基于与履行潜在工作职责充分相关的犯罪记录，否则不得基于犯罪记录撤回有条件录用通知。在本文中，我们首次提供了BTB政策与筛选过程后候选人在招聘阶段进展变化之间关联的证据。我们使用了从一家雇主在自愿实施BTB政策前后获得的独特的求职者层面的数据。我们发现，BTB政策的颁布与有犯罪记录者在候选人评估过程中通过并获得有条件录用通知的比率几乎没有关联。事实上，我们的研究结果表明，BTB政策的实施与曾因特定罪行被定罪者的招聘之间存在适度的负相关迹象。如果雇主在无法获取犯罪历史信息后，增加对与犯罪历史相关的招聘标准的依赖，那么观察到的这种模式就可以得到解释。我们还发现，有犯罪记录者在最终背景调查中通过的比率在联合BTB政策实施后并未改变。我们发现微弱的证据表明，两项BTB政策的实施对有更严重犯罪记录者的结果更不利。
