A prison record harms Black job seekers more than Whites

Evidence

These disparities within the CJS affect life outside of the CJS as well. Having a prison record makes it substantially more difficult to find gainful employment upon release from prison. In addition, the knock-on effects of having served time in prison are substantially more damaging for Blacks than they are for Whites. As a case in point, the results of a well-controlled audit study showed that the chances of receiving a callback from a job application was greater for a White job applicant with a prison record than it was for an equally qualified Black job applicant without a prison record (i.e., 17 percent vs. 14 percent respectively; Pager, 2003; see also Pager, 2005; 2007). Followup work by Apel and Powell (2019) confirms that, in general and everything else being equal, having a criminal record is more destructive of the future earnings in the labor market for Blacks and Latinos than it is for Whites. — Joseph Avery, Jim Sidanius, Joel Cooper, Gregory Davis, Amanda N., Bias in the Law, 49

Categorization

• CANDY: The 17% vs 14% callback figure is a single, memorable, conversation-stopping fact about how penal stigma and race interact.
• XREF: Connects to literature on intersection of criminal record and employment discrimination, comparable to work on resume name-discrimination audits (Bertrand & Mullainathan).
• DEEPTHINKING: The finding that stigma from conviction is outweighed by racial stigma is paradigm-shifting on how social penalties layer.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Joseph Avery, Jim Sidanius, Joel Cooper, Gregory Davis, Amanda N., Bias in the Law: A Definitive Look at…, 49