Invisible stripes? a field experiment on the disclosure of a criminal record in the British labour market and the potential effects of introducing Ban-The-Box policies

Journal article

Abstract:: Labour market discrimination against individuals with criminal records may be unfair, ineffective, and counterproductive. This article describes a field experiment designed to indicate whether job applicants disclosing a criminal record in the British labour market have a lower probability of success than equivalent applicants not disclosing criminal records. The research also provides insights into the potential effects of introducing a Ban-The-Box policy in the United Kingdom, which would prohibit questions on prior convictions in the first stages of the recruitment process. The results confirm the existence of criminal record discrimination and suggest that introducing a Ban-The-Box policy would increase job prospects for White applicants with criminal records, but not for members of ethnic minorities.

Files:: Rovira_2024_Invisible_stripes_a.pdf

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Language:: English
Keywords:: discrimination

experiment

ban the box

United Kingdom

ethnicity

criminal records
Pubs id:: 1573783
Local pid:: pubs:1573783
Deposit date:: 2023-11-30

Copyright holder:: Rovira, M
Rights statement:: © The Author(s) 2023. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies (ISTD). This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted reuse, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

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