Inequality, recidivism, and employment barriers for ex-convicts

Crime & Inequality

There is no doubt that the United States has a crime problem. Indeed, the United States has a prison population of about two million people. While many to most people would argue that people should pay for what they have done wrong, there are others that say that the criminal justice system is very dysfunctional and/or that there needs to be more care taken as it relates to what happens to people once they get out of prison. Finding jobs and establishing a steady life is sometimes quite hard for ex-convicts and this leads some rather damning outcomes such as perpetual unemployment and recidivism. There are others that push the issue further and say that inequality and other social injustices leads to crime being the issue that it is and thus many of the criminals, the minor and non-violent offenders in particular, should not bear the brunt of an unjust society. While something could and should be done to help reform those that have been in prison, those that are concerned about ex-cons have a right to be and for more than one reason.

Literature Review

The rather mammoth size of the prison population in the United States, as mentioned in the introduction, is obviously of large concern. However, there are some ancillary and related statistics about the prison population that are just as shocking and sobering. For example, about 95% of all inmates get released at some point. Per year, this figure comes to about half a million. There are over twelve million ex-felons living in the United States. Those ex-felons make up nearly a tenth (eight percent) of the workforce in the United States. This is no small thing given that roughly two thirds of ex-felons will be charged with one or more new crimes after their release from prison for their initial offense. Of that group, nearly half (forty percent) will experience that within three years (Pager).

As broadly touched upon before, there are indeed cultural and social outcomes and experiences that can lead someone to a life of crime. It is not a certainty, of course, but there are markers and precursors that certainly make someone more likely to be a criminal in the future. Once that first proverbial domino falls, the outcomes and events thereafter are unfortunately predictable. Just a few environmental situations that can lead to felon status include broken families, living in poor neighborhoods, lack of proper social control and prior experiences within the criminal justice system. Once a person has a prison record, their outlook for future employment and other opportunities becomes rather limited so long as the crimes remain on their record (Pager).

Minorities in particular bear an alarmingly high proportion of the brunt of what is described above, at least compared to the amount of black people in the broader population as compared to the amount of blacks that are in prison. Indeed, the incarceration rate for young black males in the year 2000 was about ten percent while the same rate for whites was barely more than once percent. Of course, there are many more white people than black in the United States so blacks outnumbering blacks 10:1 in prisons is a rather shocking statistic. Beyond that, the overall chance that a black person will be incarcerated in their lifetime is nearly three in ten. This is not much of a surprise given that half of the black people in question are high school dropouts. While their criminal acts cannot be ignored, it is truly unfortunate that these men have to face difficult barriers when trying to reach economic self-sufficiency (Pager).

As noted before, the prison population is two million and that number is growing sharply. Indeed, the prison population has risen six-fold from roughly 1970 to 2000. The growing number of men that are being taken into custody raise important questions through the criminal justice system. Having a criminal record is critical when it comes to employment. This circumstance disproportionately affects black people, as mentioned before. This sharp rise has led to the United States being the country with the highest incarceration rate in the world. Given that the United States is a civilized and supremely industrialized country, that is less than something to brag about. Research has shown how aggregate effects of incarceration may be preexisting traits that make these men bad in the first place. Links have been shown that characteristics such as drug/alcohol abuse, behavioral problems or poor interpersonal skill, which can lead to either incarceration or poor employment opportunities (Pager).

Survey researchers have provided a number of hypotheses regarding the means that are causing these outcomes between incarceration and employment. These include labeling effects of criminal stigma, disruption of familiarities, influence on social networks, the loss of human capital, institutional trauma, legal barriers to employment and lastly the possibility of incarceration as a negative motivator. A study was conducted by Schwartz and Skolnick to provide a more understanding valuation of the hiring process of an ex-felon. An experimental audit design was used to observe employer behavior in real-life employment situations. When conducting the study, the focus was on three primary questions. The first was to know whether or not having a criminal history was a factor when making a hiring decision. The survey showed results that a criminal record was in fact not a determining factor. Employers were rather focused on interactional styles or other observed characteristics which can then we associated with a prior criminal record. The study helps us to see to what degree employers used information about criminal histories in the absence of validating evidence. Secondly, the study shows to what extent race is considered to be a barrier when it comes to employment. Race is playing a crucial role when it comes to African-Americans being employed over the past century. It has been argued that other factors such as location, soft skills, social capital or cognitive ability has to do with most or all of the racial disparities (Pager).

The third is to evaluate whether a criminal affects black applicants more than white applicants. Research has shown that Americans are very stereotypical about blacks that relate to perceptions of violent and criminal natures. If employers are viewing blacks as potential criminals, they would be less likely to differentiate those with criminal records and those without. This proves that blacks are at a great disadvantage to begin with and will have worse outcomes when it comes to being employed. Another possibility would be if black and white applicants with a criminal record were treated equally. This audit was brought about to examine between these predictions and outcomes (Pager).

Social peace is likely to be persistent merely if economic equality does exist.

Subordinate groups tend to be overshadowed by dominant groups due to the fact that they are in control. Subordinate groups, also known as the "minority," don't have the same opportunities as dominant groups in terms of their career, education, and health. The man who invests will have more power than the man who is solely gaining an earned income; this is because capital assets have more economic power in the long run. Capital assets also have the ability of being changed into liquidity if needed (Pager). It should be noted that lack of money does not mean inequality in and of itself. However, such lack of money and capital can certainly be or become an aggravating factor in many scenarios and situations (Lewis). Even the most recent research on the subject of crime and its relation to inequality (or vice versa) points to the idea that positive correlations between violent crime and economic inequality center on economic segregation between neighborhoods rather than discord within specific neighborhoods (Kang).

Analysis & Recommendations

As far as an analysis of the problem goes and what can be done about it, there are a couple of things that the author of this report would suggest. First, there are many criminals that are truly evil people and they are selfish to a violent and extreme degree. Those sorts of people, like rapists and murderers, need to be locked up from a public safety standpoint alone. Indeed, the punishment aspect of the prison sentence is just icing on the cake, so to speak. On the other end of the spectrum, there are crimes that are strictly property related or that are extremely minor. Good examples would be petty theft and other crimes where no one is hurt and the economic damage is minor to none. However, there is plenty in the middle of those two extremes and they need to be handled the right way. As with most things, there needs to be a metered approach that takes all of the proper circumstances into account. Someone who gets their first driving under the influence (DUI) offense should be punished but they should have their record wiped or expunged if they keep their nose clean for a year or two after their initial transgression. On the other hand, if someone keeps getting DUI's and there is no end in sight, that person should truly be jailed on principle even if they have not killed anyone yet because it is really only a matter of time from a probability standpoint. Indeed, there are crimes that can be classified as "mistakes" and not borne of malice. Crimes like that lend themselves to redemption while crimes like rape, robbery and murder are typically indicative of a person who is a sociopath.

The use of the word "typically" in the last sentence of the last paragraph is not an accident. Before defining why that is, the author would point to the fact that the psychological/psychiatry framework in the United States and other countries used be rather draconian, undeveloped and sometimes even barbaric. One of the most galling examples of this in action was the use of asylums to warehouse the people of society whose actions were not controlled and/or controllable. Modern medicine and advanced therapy techniques have helped a great deal. There is still a long way to go but the United States and the wider world is light years ahead of where they used to be. It has gotten to a point where the asylums of yesteryear are gone. The problem is that those asylums have been replaced with something else.

While not true for everyone, jails are a major repository for two types of people. Those two types are drug addicts and the mentally ill. In many instances, the two intersect with the same person. Indeed, many mass shooters and other violent criminals are extremely mentally ill. They may or may not pass the bar when it comes to insanity but they are absolutely not entirely lucid. People on drugs or that are "jonesing" for the same are not much different in that they will do very illogical, violent and selfish things to get their next fix. Addressing this issue, just like was mentioned before, cannot be done in a singular and one-size-fits-all way. Indeed, even the most mentally ill or drug-addled person has to want to get better. Using the DUI example mentioned earlier, some people get extremely rattled by getting a DUI and they immediately get back on the straight and narrow. These are the sort of people that should get rehabilitation and expungements offered to them because it is clear that they understand the gravity of what they did and what truly could have happened given different circumstances such as DUI fatality accidents and so forth. The problem is that not everyone thinks they have a problem and will continue to make the same mistakes. These are the people that should NOT get diversions and second chances until/unless they get their act together. Mentally ill people are tough because getting consent to getting them medicated usually requires danger to one's self or someone else. Regardless, people that are addicted or mentally ill (or both) need to be participatory in their rehabilitation or it will not work out most of the time. If this means that they will continue to victimize and endanger people, jail is where they belong.

The other elephant in the room that has already been mentioned in this report and must be mentioned in this section is inequality. However, the author of this response would be very careful to define what equality should truly look like. While it is unfortunate that some people have less and other people have more, there are often reasons for that which have nothing to do with society treating a person bad or otherwise limiting them. Indeed, engaging in criminal activity and getting a record could have societal factors behind it. However, people still have free will and they should (and surely usually do) know prior to their crimes what could happen if they end up with a criminal record. In the end, it should come down to equality of opportunity rather than equality of outcomes as the latter is simply not possible or enforceable and it should not be done even if it were possible. Racism and other oppression obviously exists but it needs to be dealt with directly and it should be limited to the people that are actually doing wrong. People that commit crimes, for the most part, simply cannot blame society or their parentage for the actions that they commit as adults. Juvenile offenders are quite often a different story but that is a whole other report.

In the end, there needs to be the addressing of two main issues. One is proper family planning and sexual habits and the other is breaking down the remnants of racism and oppression at the institutional level. However, the latter does not refer to going soft on criminals, especially those that repeat and recidivate. A good many of the crimes that are labeled as "victimless" are far from it. Even if a drug deal does not stab or hurt anyone directly through a violent act, the spreading and selling of the drugs (marijuana excluded, to be fair) is laughable at best. To use a good example, eliminating the disaprities between jail setnences when it comes to crack cocaine (more often used by black people) and powder cocaine (mostly used by white people) is a good example of an institutional bias that needs to go away. However, allowing minority offenders to use societal dysfunction as a means to escape some or all liability is a non-starter. It should not have carried any weight with the "affluenza" teen (who was white) and it also shouldn't hold for black, Latino or other offenders either.