[It's] what you do after the mistake that counts”
Positive employment credentials, criminal record stigma, and potential pathways of mediation
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 9680201 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Megan Denver (0000-0003-0362-9819, School of Criminology and Criminal Justice Northeastern University, corresponding author), Samuel E Dewitt (0000-0002-3968-1064, Department of Criminal Justice and Criminology University of North Carolina—Charlotte) |
| Year | 2023 |
| Volume | 61 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 5-39 |
| Publication date | 2023-02-01 |
| 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 | 10.1111/1745-9125.12319 |
| OpenAlex | W4295232544 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 19 |
| References cited | 87 |
The findings from prior research indicate that positive credentials, or documentation of prosocial accomplishments, can vary in strength and perceived value in mitigating aversions to hiring individuals with criminal records. In the current study, we examine why certain types of positive credentials may be more influential in reducing stigma than others. Using data from a nationwide survey of American adults (N = 3,476), we combine a mediation analysis with content‐coding of open‐ended responses to identify key themes and patterns in decision processes. The results indicate the factors examined here—employee dependability, trustworthiness, recidivism risk, and workplace crime—explain a large proportion of the total effect across credentials and are the strongest for reference letters. Trustworthiness is the most influential mediator across credentials, whereas general recidivism risk is consistently the lowest. An analysis of open‐ended responses provides further context and insight into these patterns. Although policy strategies often target risk reduction on the employer's end, credentials that also relay information about skills, character, and the timeline of recent life events are especially influential
Context (archaeology · Criminology · Documentation · Mediation · Political science · Recidivism · Timeline · Crime Patterns and Interventions · Psychology · Social and Intergroup Psychology · Social Power and Status Dynamics · Social Psychology
What’s in a Label? Public Use and Perceptions of Labeling Alternatives in Criminology
The Effect of Impression Management on Ex-offender Hiring Outcomes Is Not Moderated by Race and Ethnicity of the Ex-offender and Hiring Manager
Identity work and stigma
Sexual misconduct and evaluation of candidate appropriateness for employment within a nonpublic-facing role
Employability Perceptions
College Admissions and Criminal Records
Who Succeeds? A Review of Theory and Research on the Moderators of Post-Incarceration Outcomes
Criminal Record Stigma in the Labor Market for College Graduates
Privacy, promotionalism and the proliferation of state-performed criminal record screening in the Netherlands
It's a start”
Direct incentives may increase employment of people with criminal records
The harms of being trusted or distrusted
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
The transferal of criminal record stigma in the employment context
Degrees of difference
How to overcome the cost of a criminal record for getting hired
Public support for universal second look sentencing, a research note
Advances In Experimental Social Psychology
The Ex-Prisoner's Dilemma
The Seductions of Quantification
Marked
Reputation as a sufficient condition for data quality on Amazon Mechanical Turk
The average laboratory samples a population of 7,300 Amazon Mechanical Turk workers
Comparing Coefficients of Nested Nonlinear Probability Models
Nonnaïveté among Amazon Mechanical Turk workers
Ex-offender employment programs and recidivism
Caring, Control, and Clinicians' Influence
Anger versus fear about crime
A Continuum of Impression Formation, from Category-Based to Individuating Processes
The Causes and Consequences of Distinctively Black Names
Are Emily and Greg More Employable Than Lakisha and Jamal? A Field Experiment on Labor Market Discrimination
Perceived Criminality, Criminal Background Checks, and the Racial Hiring Practices of Employers
Reentry and the Ties that Bind
Social Networks and Status Attainment
Ban the Box, Criminal Records, and Racial Discrimination
Social Capital
Pygmalion in the reintegration process
Outsiders
Does a Criminal Past Predict Worker Performance? Evidence from One of America’s Largest Employers
An Analysis of Certificates of Rehabilitation in the United States
What Age Is in a Name
Comparing Data Characteristics and Results of an Online Factorial Survey between a Population-Based and a Crowdsource-Recruited Sample
Distinction without a difference? An assessment of MTurk Worker types
The Generalizability of Survey Experiments
Gendered Public Support for Criminalizing “Revenge Porn”
A Signaling Perspective on Employment‐Based Reentry Programming
Elements of Successful Desistance Signaling
Digital degradation
Bad jobs and good workers
Legal Ambiguity in Managerial Assessments of Criminal Records
Before and After Ban the Box
How Do Summer Youth Employment Programs Improve Criminal Justice Outcomes, and for Whom
Networks, Norms, and Trust
Looking for truth in all the wrong places? Asymmetric search of individuating information about stereotyped group members
Sequencing Disadvantage
Credentialing Decisions and Criminal Records
Public fear of protesters and support for protest policing
Employer aversion to criminal records
Heuristics and Biases, Rational Choice, and Sanction Perceptions
A New Look at the Employment and Recidivism Relationship Through the Lens of a Criminal Background Check
The Language of Stigmatization and the Mark of Violence
Damned if you do, damned if you don't
How and Why Does Work Matter? Employment Conditions, Routine Activities, and Crime Among Adult Male Offenders
Returning to a Former Employer
Endogenous Selection Bias
The shape of and solutions to the MTurk quality crisis
Yes, but what’s the mechanism? (don’t expect an easy answer)
Comparing Regression Coefficients Between Same-sample Nested Models Using Logit and Probit
Can Non-full-probability Internet Surveys Yield Useful Data? A Comparison with Full-probability Face-to-face Surveys in the Domain of Race and Social Inequality Attitudes
Qualitative Analysis for Social Scientists
Stereotypes and prejudice
Discrimination in a Low-Wage Labor Market
Work as a Turning Point in the Life Course of Criminals
Forming impressions of personality
The Demographic and Political Composition of Mechanical Turk Samples
Participation in labour market programmes
The Signalling Value of Labour Market Programmes
The Mark of a Criminal Record
| Unique citing works | 19 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 6,33 |
| Citation span | 2023 - 2026 (4) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 19 |