Damned if you do, damned if you don't
How formerly incarcerated men navigate the labor market with prison credentials
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 9680101 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Sadé L Lindsay (0000-0002-5365-1072, Jeb E. Brooks School of Public Policy, Department of Sociology Cornell University, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2022 |
| Volume | 60 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 455-479 |
| Publication date | 2022-08-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Criminology (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0011-1384 • E-ISSN: 1745-9125 |
| Publisher | Wiley (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1111/1745-9125.12307 |
| OpenAlex | W4220706830 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 31 |
| References cited | 95 |
Although employment is central to successful reentry, formerly incarcerated people struggle to find work because of criminal stigma, poor education, and sparse work histories. Prison credentials are proposed as one solution to alleviate these challenges by signaling criminal desistance and employability. Evidence regarding their efficacy, however, is inconsistent. In this article, I develop a novel explanation— the prison credential dilemma —highlighting the numerous and contradictory ways employers may interpret prison credentials as positive and negative signals. Drawing on 50 qualitative interviews with formerly incarcerated men in Franklin County, Ohio, I examine how the prison credential dilemma and the uncertainty it produces shape their job search strategies and pathways to employment. I find that participants concealed or obscured institutional affiliations of prison credentials on job applications to signal employability rather than their criminal records. In job interviews, however, prison credentials were used to divert conversations away from their criminal record toward skills and criminal desistance via the use of redemptive narratives. Participants also attempted to acquire credentials outside of prison and/or pursued temporary, precarious jobs, aspiring for such physically strenuous and poorly paid work to materialize into stable employment. This study has implications for prison programming as well as policies and practices aiming to improve reentry outcomes
Credential · Criminology · Dilemma · Employability · Political science · Prison · Public relations · Sociology · Work (physics · Crime Patterns and Interventions · Criminal Justice and Corrections Analysis · Engineering · Homelessness and Social Issues · Law · Psychology
Love after lockup
Mixed Signals
The Effect of Impression Management on Ex-offender Hiring Outcomes Is Not Moderated by Race and Ethnicity of the Ex-offender and Hiring Manager
Peer Mentors as Prison Volunteers
From prison to profession
Intimate Partner Violence and Partner Incarceration
Race, Perceived Neighborhood Characteristics, and Post-Release Employability among Incarcerated Men
Pathways to second chances
A Racialized Engine of Anxiety? Race, Reactivity, and the Uneven Tax of Credit Scores
Examining the Role of Meaningful Work for Desistance Among Justice-Involved Emerging Adults
Employability Perceptions
Are you supposed to be here?”
Who Succeeds? A Review of Theory and Research on the Moderators of Post-Incarceration Outcomes
Softening the Stigma of Incarceration with Personal Narratives
Navigating the Labor Market among People Who Use Drugs
Narratives and destigmatization
Barriers and Strategies to Finding Employment for Substance-Involved Women Leaving Jail
It's a start”
Carceral networking and penal liminality
Maternal Wealth Implications of Child Incarceration
How prior experience and belief in redeemability impact employers' willingness to hire applicants with a criminal record
The problem with criminal records
Mixed signals from prison? Postsecondary vocational credentials, race, and postrelease employment
Degrees of difference
The mark or trace of a criminal record
How to overcome the cost of a criminal record for getting hired
Home but not free
[It's] what you do after the mistake that counts”
Criminal record stigma, race, and neighborhood inequality
The Unrealized Potential of Audits
Does local context matter? Unemployment rates and the labor market consequences of incarceration
The Credential Society
Lower Ed
Making good
Digital Punishment
Marked
The Value of Postsecondary Credentials in the Labor Market
Credentials, Signals, and Screens
Employment After Prison
Signaling Theory
Caring, Control, and Clinicians' Influence
Training and Employment for Correctional Populations
Toward a Theory of Race, Crime, and Urban Inequality
The Science and Art of Interviewing
After Prison
Evaluating the Effectiveness of Correctional Education
Ban the Box, Criminal Records, and Racial Discrimination
Pygmalion in the reintegration process
Whitened Résumés
Black Criminal Stereotypes and Racial Profiling
Racialized Re-entry
Shared Beginnings, Divergent Lives
White Men Can’t Jump, but Does It Even Matter? Exit Discrimination in the NBA
Efforts by Offenders to Manage and Overcome Stigma
Desistance from Offending in the Twenty-First Century
The Intended and Unintended Consequences of Ban the Box
Predatory Inclusion and Education Debt
Perceptions of and Responses to Stigma
Criminal Record Questions, Statistical Discrimination, and Equity in a “Ban the Box” Era
A Signaling Perspective on Employment‐Based Reentry Programming
Criminal Record Questions in the Era of “Ban the Box”
Devolving the carceral state
Digital degradation
Working around the Law
Work Your Story”
Before and After Ban the Box
Get to Work or Go to Jail
Do Employers Prefer Workers Who Attend For-Profit Colleges? Evidence from a Field Experiment
Daytime Locations in Spatial Mismatch
The Growth, Scope, and Spatial Distribution of People With Felony Records in the United States, 1948–2010
Criminal stigma, race, and ethnicity
Narratives of Commitment
Occupational Segregation and the Devaluation of Women's Work across U.S. Labor Markets
Sequencing Disadvantage
Bayesian Bigot? Statistical Discrimination, Stereotypes, and Employer Decision Making
Employer aversion to criminal records
The accumulation of disadvantage
Criminal records and college admissions
The Edge of Stigma
How and Why Does Work Matter? Employment Conditions, Routine Activities, and Crime Among Adult Male Offenders
Job Market Signaling
Rehabilitation in the Punitive Era
A Theory of Racialized Organizations
Race and Networks in the Job Search Process
Constructing Adulthood in an Age of Uncertainty
Discrimination in a Low-Wage Labor Market
Penalized or Protected? Gender and the Consequences of Nonstandard and Mismatched Employment Histories
Why Status Matters for Inequality
The art of deciding with data
Understanding the "How" and "Why" Aspects of Racial-Ethnic Discrimination
Demonstrating Rigor Using Thematic Analysis
Flexible Coding of In-depth Interviews
The Sociology of Discrimination
New Economics of Sociological Criminology
Incarceration and Stratification
Employer Decision Making
Anticipated Stigma and Defensive Individualism During Postincarceration Job Searching
Men's Social Integration after Incarceration
Race and the Geography of Opportunity in the Post-Prison Labor Market
Employment Application Criminal Record Questions and Willingness to Apply
Race, Place, and Crime
Work as Foraging
Race, Self-Selection, and the Job Search Process
The Mark of a Criminal Record
Gender, Crime, and Desistance
Jean Valjean's Dilemma
Race, Criminal Records, and Certificates of Relief
Anticipated Stigma and Stigma Management Among Those to be Labeled 'Ex-con
| Unique citing works | 31 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 10,33 |
| Citation span | 2023 - 2026 (4) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 31 |