Will Employers Hire Ex-Offenders? Employer Checks, Background Checks, and Their Determinants

Harry Holzer, Steven Raphael and Michael Stoll

Berkeley Program on Housing and Urban Policy, Working Paper Series from Berkeley Program on Housing and Urban Policy

Abstract: In this paper, we analyze employer demand for ex-offenders. We use data from a recent survey of employers to analyze not only employer preferences for offenders, but also the extent to which they check criminal backgrounds in the presence of very imperfect information about the job applicants whom they consider. We investigate the firm and job characteristics that correlate with these measures of employer demand. We also consider the extent to which such demand changed during the 1990's, in response to tighter labor market conditions, using data from surveys administered at different points in time. Finally, we consider the quantities of demand for ex-offenders relative to their supply, based on a variety of estimates of total stocks and annual flows of offenders back to the civilian population.

Date: 2001-10-01
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.escholarship.org/uc/item/3c6468h2.pdf;origin=repeccitec (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cdl:bphupl:qt3c6468h2

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Berkeley Program on Housing and Urban Policy, Working Paper Series from Berkeley Program on Housing and Urban Policy Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Lisa Schiff ().