Background Checks
Background Checks
The Accidental Expert: My Journey in the World of Background Checks
My dissertation was on background checks. Standard thinking at the time was that jobs could help people desist from crime. My dissertation was among the first to document that a criminal record could negatively impact employment.
But that only happens if employers can get access to criminal history records. Way back in 1996, official government repositories were among the only places to get records, and different states had different rules about who could access these records. My work documented for the first time that policies that attempted to limit record access could potentially have negative consequences for minority job applicants. This idea is now mainstream, due largely to the work of Agan and Starr around Ban the Box legislation.
Finding My Path (With Help from a Librarian)
As a teenager, I desperately wanted to be the next Mother Teresa or Dorothy Day. After my freshman year in college at Notre Dame, I volunteered at a summer day camp in the First Ward of Lackawanna. At the end of the summer, the director gently suggested that perhaps I would have more of an impact on policy if I used my prodigious analytical skills rather than my somewhat more limited people skills. I was crushed, but later, when I was admitted to a PhD program in Public Policy that I didn’t even apply to, I was heartened that maybe this was the way I could be involved in the policy debate, even if it would take a while.
During my last two years of doctoral work, I became one of the leading consumers of policy and research documents from SEARCH, the consortium of state record repositories funded by the Department of Justice. I was on a first-name basis with the SEARCH librarian. I still have all the files she sent me—but now I am the at-large academic member of SEARCH. Also worth noting: the CMU librarian who put me in touch with the SEARCH librarian also introduced me to my wife. Yes, I have a special place in my heart for librarians.
A Field of Two
I could not have predicted how dynamic the world of background checks would become. The advent of the internet meant that private vendors could bypass the repositories and sell directly to employers and others online. This easier and cheaper access made background checks nearly ubiquitous and created an active legal and policy debate around the use of criminal history records by employers. "Ban the Box" quickly swept the nation, an excellent example of how a well-executed advocacy campaign can quickly change the world.
Virtually no one studied the topic of background checks, except Professor Harry Holzer at Georgetown. Harry was kind enough to tell journalists and policymakers about this young economist who was "a leading expert on background checks." Not exactly a lie, but not hard to lead in a field of two. As a result, I found myself presenting on Capitol Hill, discussing reentry on the front page of the New York Times, and joining boards for reentry advocacy groups at the ripe old age of 31.
From Research to Real-World Impact
This unique position put me in regular contact with policymakers and advocates who were shaping policy in this space. One of my most popular papers, with Megan Kurlychek and Bobby Brame, was written directly in response to a question from an appeals court about when, and if, people with a record ever had the same level of risk of offending as someone without a record (Kurlychek et al. 2006, 2007).
That paper and its siblings became the backbone of the revised guidance by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission on the use of criminal history records by employers in 2012. If for some reason my career had ended in 2012, I would have been happy—I achieved my original goal of participating in the policy process.
That EEOC guidance also recommended that employers talk to criminologists about how to revise their background check policies. Remember when I told you there were two of us? The number was now like five, but I still found myself consulting with the general counsels of Fortune 50 companies about how to improve their background check processes. What an incredible learning experience at the same time, I led a great team of young scholars who studied the background check process at the New York State Department of Health. Much of what we learned is included in a review on background checks published in the Annual Review of Criminology.
Ultimately, I went to RAND for three years to see if I could more systematically build a forward-facing policy framework around background checks. Check out our cool website, and stay tuned for more work that builds directly on the EEOC’s 2012 guidance.
Selected Papers on Background Checks
Bushway, Shawn (2004). “Labor Market Effects of Permitting Employer Access to Criminal History Records,” Journal of Contemporary Criminal Justice. Special issue on Economics and Crime. 20:276-29
Bushway, Shawn; Shauna Briggs*, Faye Taxman, Meridith Thanner*, and Mischelle Van Brakle*. (2007). “Private Providers of Criminal History Records: Do You Get What You Pay For?” in Bushway, Shawn, Michael Stoll, and David Weiman (eds.) 2007 The Impact of Incarceration on Labor Market Outcomes. New York: Russell Sage Foundation Press. P. 174-200
PDF NOT AVAILABLE
Kurlychek, Megan, Robert Brame and Shawn Bushway (2006). “Scarlet Letters and Recidivism: Does An Old Criminal Record Predict Future Offending?” Criminology and Public Policy 5:3:483-504.
Kurlychek, Megan, Robert Brame, and Shawn Bushway (2007). "Enduring Risk? Old Criminal Records and Predictions of Future Criminal Involvement," Crime & Delinquency 53:1:64-83.
Stoll, Michael A. and Shawn Bushway (2008). “The Effect of Criminal Background Checks on Hiring ExOffenders,” Criminology and Public Policy 7:3:371-404.
Bushway, Shawn, Paul Nieuwbeerta, and Arjan Blokland. (2011). “The Predictive Value of Criminal Background Checks: Do Age and Criminal History Affect Time to Redemption?“ Criminology.49:1:27-60
Denver, Megan*; Garima Siwach*, and Shawn Bushway (2017). "A New Look at the Employment and Recidivism Relationship Through the Lens of a Criminal Record." Criminology 55:1:174-204.
Bushway, Shawn and Nidhi Kalra (2021). "A Policy Review of Employers' Open Access to Conviction Records." Annual Review of Criminology 4:165-189.
Bushway, Shawn; Irineo Cabreros, Jessica Welburn Paige, Daniel Schwam* and Jeffrey B. Wenger. (2022) “Barred from employment: More than half of unemployed men in their 30s had a criminal history of arrest.” Science Advances 8(7).
Other
RAND Corporation. Resetting the Record: The Facts on Hiring People With Criminal Histories