Employment discrimination against persons with criminal records

Last updated

Employment discrimination against persons with criminal records varies from country to country. Many countries prohibit the official disclosure of certain convictions that happened long ago and allow ex-offenders to legally conceal their criminal past. [1]

Ex-offenders often face employment discrimination by default when they search for work after completing their punishment. This discrimination is often enacted upon completion of employment applications that require responses about past criminal history. Many richer countries, such as Australia, Canada, United Kingdom and United States, have passed legislation prohibiting discrimination based on criminal record. However, the availability and extent of protection against discrimination for ex-offenders differs across jurisdictions.

Employers might be unwilling to hire those with criminal records for many reasons – such as the risk of legal liability if a previous offender harms a customer or coworker, the risk of financial liability if the offender engages in theft, fears of personal violence, and the negative signals that a period of incarceration sends about their general skills or trustworthiness. Public policies to assist offenders from obtaining employment therefore focus on allowing them to conceal convictions, although they accept that for a few professions such as police officers, it is necessary for the employer to know about the convictions. According to the document on Title VII Challenges to Employment Discrimination, between 25% and 40% of ex-offenders are unemployed and job prospects for criminal offenders are only expected to worsen as employers continue to gain easier and cheaper access to criminal records.

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sexual harassment</span> Unwanted sexual attention or advances

Sexual harassment is a type of harassment involving the use of explicit or implicit sexual overtones, including the unwelcome and inappropriate promises of rewards in exchange for sexual favors. Sexual harassment includes a range of actions from verbal transgressions to sexual abuse or assault. Harassment can occur in many different social settings such as the workplace, the home, school, or religious institutions. Harassers or victims may be of any sex or gender.

An ex post facto law is a law that retroactively changes the legal consequences of actions that were committed, or relationships that existed, before the enactment of the law. In criminal law, it may criminalize actions that were legal when committed; it may aggravate a crime by bringing it into a more severe category than it was in when it was committed; it may change the punishment prescribed for a crime, as by adding new penalties or extending sentences; or it may alter the rules of evidence in order to make conviction for a crime likelier than it would have been when the deed was committed.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Criminal record</span> Record of a persons criminal history

A criminal record, police record, or colloquially RAP sheet is a record of a person's criminal history. The information included in a criminal record and the existence of a criminal record varies between countries and even between jurisdictions within a country. In most cases it lists all non-expunged criminal offences and may also include traffic offences such as speeding and drunk driving. In some countries the record is limited to actual convictions, while in others it also includes arrests, charges dismissed, charges pending and charges of which the individual has been acquitted.

A background check is a process a person or company uses to verify that an individual is who they claim to be, and this provides an opportunity to check and confirm the validity of someone's criminal record, education, employment history, and other activities from their past. The frequency, purpose, and legitimacy of background checks varies among countries, industries, and individuals. An employment background check typically takes place when someone applies for a job, but it can also happen at any time the employer deems necessary. A variety of methods are used to complete these checks including comprehensive database search and personal references.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Recidivism</span> Person repeating an undesirable behavior following punishment

Recidivism is the act of a person repeating an undesirable behavior after they have experienced negative consequences of that behavior. It is also used to refer to the percentage of former prisoners who are rearrested for a similar offense.

Negligence in employment encompasses several causes of action in tort law that arise where an employer is held liable for the tortious acts of an employee because that employer was negligent in providing the employee with the ability to engage in a particular act. Four basic causes of action may arise from such a scenario: negligent hiring, negligent retention, negligent supervision and negligent training. While negligence in employment may overlap with negligent entrustment and vicarious liability, the concepts are distinct grounds of liability. The doctrine that an employer is liable for torts committed by employees within the scope of their employment is called respondeat superior.

Employment discrimination is a form of illegal discrimination in the workplace based on legally protected characteristics. In the U.S., federal anti-discrimination law prohibits discrimination by employers against employees based on age, race, gender, sex, religion, national origin, and physical or mental disability. State and local laws often protect additional characteristics such as marital status, veteran status and caregiver/familial status. Earnings differentials or occupational differentiation—where differences in pay come from differences in qualifications or responsibilities—should not be confused with employment discrimination. Discrimination can be intended and involve disparate treatment of a group or be unintended, yet create disparate impact for a group.

Disparate impact in United States labor law refers to practices in employment, housing, and other areas that adversely affect one group of people of a protected characteristic more than another, even though rules applied by employers or landlords are formally neutral. Although the protected classes vary by statute, most federal civil rights laws consider race, color, religion, national origin, and sex to be protected characteristics, and some laws include disability status and other traits as well.

Collateral consequences of criminal conviction are the additional civil state penalties, mandated by statute, that attach to a criminal conviction. They are not part of the direct consequences of criminal conviction, such as prison, fines, or probation. They are the further civil actions by the state that are triggered as a consequence of the conviction.

Employment discrimination law in the United States derives from the common law, and is codified in numerous state, federal, and local laws. These laws prohibit discrimination based on certain characteristics or "protected categories." The United States Constitution also prohibits discrimination by federal and state governments against their public employees. Discrimination in the private sector is not directly constrained by the Constitution, but has become subject to a growing body of federal and state law, including the Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Federal law prohibits discrimination in a number of areas, including recruiting, hiring, job evaluations, promotion policies, training, compensation and disciplinary action. State laws often extend protection to additional categories or employers.

Spent conviction legislation allows the criminal records of offenders to be amended by removing some offences after a certain period of time. The idea behind spent convictions schemes is to allow former offenders to 'wipe the slate clean' after a certain period of time, depending on the offence.

Employment equity, as defined in federal Canadian law by the Employment Equity Act, requires federal jurisdiction employers to engage in proactive employment practices to increase the representation of four designated groups: women, people with disabilities, Aboriginal peoples, and visible minorities. The act states that "employment equity means more than treating persons the same way but also requires special measures and the accommodation of differences".

Philippine criminal laws is the body of law and defining the penalties thereof in the Philippines.

Harassment covers a wide range of behaviors of offensive nature. It is commonly understood as behavior that demeans, humiliates or embarrasses a person, and it is characteristically identified by its unlikelihood in terms of social and moral reasonableness. In the legal sense, these are behaviors that appear to be disturbing, upsetting or threatening. They evolve from discriminatory grounds, and have an effect of nullifying a person's rights or impairing a person from benefiting from their rights. When these behaviors become repetitive, it is defined as bullying. The continuity or repetitiveness and the aspect of distressing, alarming or threatening may distinguish it from insult.

Employment discrimination against persons with criminal records in the United States has been illegal since enactment of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. [citation?] Employers retain the right to lawfully consider an applicant's or employee's criminal conviction(s) for employment purposes e.g., hiring, retention, promotion, benefits, and delegated duties.

Workplace harassment is the belittling or threatening behavior directed at an individual worker or a group of workers.

Price Waterhouse v. Hopkins, 490 U.S. 228 (1989), was a landmark decision of the US Supreme Court on the issues of prescriptive sex discrimination and employer liability for sex discrimination. The employee, Ann Hopkins, sued her former employer, the accounting firm Price Waterhouse. She argued that the firm denied her partnership because she did not fit the partners' idea of what a female employee should look and act like. The employer failed to prove that it would have denied her partnership anyway, and the Court held that constituted sex discrimination under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The significance of the Supreme Court's ruling was twofold. First, it established that gender stereotyping is actionable as sex discrimination. Second, it established the mixed-motive framework that enables employees to prove discrimination when other, lawful reasons for the adverse employment action exist alongside discriminatory motivations or reasons.

Devah Iwalani Pager was an American sociologist best known for her research on racial discrimination in employment and the American criminal justice system. At the time of her death, she was Professor of Sociology and Public Policy at Harvard University. She was a class of 2011 William T. Grant Scholar.

Ban the Box is the name of an American campaign by advocates for ex-offenders aimed at removing the check box that asks if applicants have a criminal record from hiring applications. Its purpose is to enable ex-offenders to display their qualifications in the hiring process before being asked about their criminal records. The premise of the campaign is that anything that makes it harder for ex-offenders to find a job makes it likelier that they will reoffend, which is bad for society.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Criminal justice reform in the United States</span>

Criminal justice reform addresses structural issues in criminal justice systems such as racial profiling, police brutality, overcriminalization, mass incarceration, and recidivism. Reforms can take place at any point where the criminal justice system intervenes in citizens’ lives, including lawmaking, policing, sentencing and incarceration. Criminal justice reform can also address the collateral consequences of conviction, including disenfranchisement or lack of access to housing or employment, that may restrict the rights of individuals with criminal records.

References

  1. Helen Lam and Mark Harcourt (Oct 2003), "The Use of Criminal Record in Employment Decisions: The Rights of Ex-Offenders, Employers and the Public", Journal of Business Ethics, 47 (3): 237–252, doi:10.1023/A:1026243413175, JSTOR   25075141, S2CID   152742700

[1] [2] [3]

  1. Berkeley Journal of African-American Law & Policy Volume 14 | Issue 1 Article 6 January 2012 Title VII Challenges to Employment Discrimination Against Minority Men With Criminal Records Alexandra Harwin https://scholarship.law.berkeley.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1010&context=bjalp
  2. The Use of Criminal Record in Employment Decisions: The Rights of Ex-offenders, Employers and the Public Lam, H. & Harcourt, M. Journal of Business Ethics (2003) 47: 237. https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1026243413175
  3. Criminal Records, Collateral Consequences, and Employment: FCRA and Title VII in Discrimination againstPersons with Criminal RecordsCarlin M, Frick ESsrn Electron J2012 doi : 10.2139/ssrn.2233647