IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/aei/rpaper/880075.html

'Ban the Box' measures help high-crime neighborhoods

Author

Listed:
  • Stan Veuger

    (American Enterprise Institute)

  • Daniel Shoag

Abstract

A sizable number of localities have in recent years limited the use of criminal background checks in hiring decisions, or "banned the box." Using LEHD Origin-Destination Employment and American Community Survey data, we show that these bans increased employment of residents in high-crime neighborhoods by as much as 4%. These increases are particularly large in the public sector. At the same time, we establish using job postings data that employers respond to ban-the-box measures by raising experience requirements. A perhaps unintended consequence of this is that women, who are less likely to be convicted of crimes, see their employment opportunities reduced.

Suggested Citation

  • Stan Veuger & Daniel Shoag, 2019. "'Ban the Box' measures help high-crime neighborhoods," AEI Economics Working Papers 880075, American Enterprise Institute.
    • Handle: RePEc:aei:rpaper:880075
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.aei.org/publication/banning-the-box-consequences-of-bans-on-criminal-record-screening-in-employment-applications
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Devah Pager & Bruce Western & Naomi Sugie, 2009. "Sequencing Disadvantage: Barriers to Employment Facing Young Black and White Men with Criminal Records," The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, , vol. 623(1), pages 195-213, May.
    2. A. Colin Cameron & Jonah B. Gelbach & Douglas L. Miller, 2008. "Bootstrap-Based Improvements for Inference with Clustered Errors," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 90(3), pages 414-427, August.
    3. Abigail Wozniak, 2015. "Discrimination and the Effects of Drug Testing on Black Employment," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 97(3), pages 548-566, July.
    4. Robert Clifford & Daniel Shoag, 2016. "“No more credit score”: employer credit check bans and signal substitution," Working Papers 16-10, Federal Reserve Bank of Boston.
    5. Ferdinando Monte, 2016. "The Local Incidence of Trade Shocks," 2016 Meeting Papers 1682, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    6. Matthew R. Graham & Mark J. Kutzbach & Brian McKenzie, 2014. "Design Comparison of LODES and ACS Commuting Data Products," Working Papers 14-38, Center for Economic Studies, U.S. Census Bureau.
    7. David H. Autor & David Scarborough, 2008. "Does Job Testing Harm Minority Workers? Evidence from Retail Establishments," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 123(1), pages 219-277.
    8. McCauley, E.J., 2017. "The cumulative probability of arrest by age 28 years in the United States by disability status, race/ethnicity, and gender," American Journal of Public Health, American Public Health Association, vol. 107(12), pages 1977-1981.
    9. Terry‐Ann Craigie, 2020. "Ban The Box, Convictions, And Public Employment," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 58(1), pages 425-445, January.
    10. Holzer, Harry J & Raphael, Steven & Stoll, Michael A, 2006. "Perceived Criminality, Criminal Background Checks, and the Racial Hiring Practices of Employers," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 49(2), pages 451-480, October.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Burton, Anne M. & Wasser, David N., 2025. "Revisiting the unintended consequences of Ban the Box," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 250(C).
    2. Bryan L. Sykes & Meghan Ballard & Daniela Kaiser & Vicente Celestino Mata & J. Amanda Sharry & Justin Sola, 2022. "Barred: Labor Market Dynamics and Human Capital Development among People on Probation and Parole," The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, , vol. 701(1), pages 28-45, May.
    3. Osborne Jackson & Riley Sullivan & Bo Zhao, 2017. "Reintegrating the ex-offender population in the U.S. labor market: lessons from the CORI Reform in Massachusetts," New England Public Policy Center Research Report 17-1, Federal Reserve Bank of Boston.
    4. Lundberg, Alexander & Mungan, Murat, 2022. "The effect of evidentiary rules on conviction rates," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 203(C), pages 563-576.
    5. Harry J. Holzer, 2022. "Why Do People under Community Supervision Work and Earn So Little? And What Can Policy Do to Increase Their Employment and Earnings?," The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, , vol. 701(1), pages 46-60, May.
    6. Kaestner, Robert & Wang, Xufei, 2024. "Ban-the-box laws: Fair and effective?," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 78(C).
    7. Cody Tuttle, 2019. "Snapping Back: Food Stamp Bans and Criminal Recidivism," American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, American Economic Association, vol. 11(2), pages 301-327, May.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Robert Clifford & Daniel Shoag, 2016. "“No more credit score”: employer credit check bans and signal substitution," Working Papers 16-10, Federal Reserve Bank of Boston.
    2. Clifford, Robert & Shoag, Daniel, 2016. ""No More Credit Score": Emplyer Credit Check Bans and Signal Substitution," Working Paper Series 16-008, Harvard University, John F. Kennedy School of Government.
    3. Ballance, Joshua & Clifford, Robert & Shoag, Daniel, 2020. "“No more credit score”: Employer credit check bans and signal substitution," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 63(C).
    4. Burton, Anne M. & Wasser, David N., 2025. "Revisiting the unintended consequences of Ban the Box," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 250(C).
    5. Amanda Agan & Sonja Starr, 2016. "Ban the Box, Criminal Records, and Statistical Discrimination: A Field Experiment," Working Papers 598, Princeton University, Department of Economics, Industrial Relations Section..
    6. Joshua M. Congdon-Hohman, 2018. "The persistent labor market effects of a criminal conviction and �Ban the Box� reforms," Working Papers 1808, College of the Holy Cross, Department of Economics.
    7. Conrad Miller, 2017. "The Persistent Effect of Temporary Affirmative Action," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Association, vol. 9(3), pages 152-190, July.
    8. Krista Ruffini & Aaron Sojourner & Abigail Wozniak, 2021. "Who'S In And Who'S Out Under Workplace Covid Symptom Screening?," Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 40(2), pages 614-641, March.
    9. Jennifer L. Doleac & Benjamin Hansen, 2016. "Does “Ban the Box” Help or Hurt Low-Skilled Workers? Statistical Discrimination and Employment Outcomes When Criminal Histories are Hidden," NBER Working Papers 22469, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    10. Allison Dwyer Emory, 2019. "Unintended Consequences: Protective State Policies and the Employment of Fathers with Criminal Records," Working Papers wp19-04-ff, Princeton University, School of Public and International Affairs, Center for Research on Child Wellbeing..
    11. Laouénan, Morgane & Rathelot, Roland, 2017. "Ethnic Discrimination on an Online Marketplace of Vacation Rental," CAGE Online Working Paper Series 318, Competitive Advantage in the Global Economy (CAGE).
    12. Gultekin Gollu & Mariyana Zapryanova, 2022. "The effect of Medicaid on recidivism: Evidence from Medicaid suspension and termination policies," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 89(2), pages 326-372, October.
    13. Amanda Y. Agan & Michael D. Makowsky, 2023. "The Minimum Wage, EITC, and Criminal Recidivism," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 58(5), pages 1712-1751.
    14. Laura Blattner & Scott Nelson, 2021. "How Costly is Noise? Data and Disparities in Consumer Credit," Papers 2105.07554, arXiv.org.
    15. Steven Raphael, 2010. "Improving Employment Prospects for Former Prison Inmates: Challenges and Policy," NBER Working Papers 15874, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    16. Sabia, Joseph J. & Nguyen, Thanh Tam, 2016. "The Effect of Medical Marijuana Laws on Labor Market Outcomes," IZA Discussion Papers 9831, IZA Network @ LISER.
    17. Keith Finlay, 2009. "Effect of Employer Access to Criminal History Data on the Labor Market Outcomes of Ex-Offenders and Non-Offenders," NBER Chapters, in: Studies of Labor Market Intermediation, pages 89-125, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    18. Bryan L. Sykes & Meghan Ballard & Daniela Kaiser & Vicente Celestino Mata & J. Amanda Sharry & Justin Sola, 2022. "Barred: Labor Market Dynamics and Human Capital Development among People on Probation and Parole," The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, , vol. 701(1), pages 28-45, May.
    19. Steven Raphael, 2010. "Improving Employment Prospects for Former Prison Inmates: Challenges and Policy," NBER Chapters, in: Controlling Crime: Strategies and Tradeoffs, pages 521-565, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    20. Oleksandra Cheipesh, 2025. "Hidden Costs of Ban the Box Laws: Unraveling the Effects on Drug‐Related Deaths," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 34(11), pages 2059-2071, November.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • A - General Economics and Teaching

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:aei:rpaper:880075. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Dave Adams, CIO (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/aeiiius.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.