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> You can’t just ask businesses to stop doing background checks and employ convicted felons and hope they will not embezzle funds from their new employer. The r
by _moof 5y ago
> You can’t just ask businesses to stop doing background checks and employ convicted felons and hope they will not embezzle funds from their new employer. The risk is too high.
There is a reasonable solution to this, and it's "ban the box" or "fair chance hiring" laws. These laws make it illegal to perform background checks prior to making a conditional offer. The best ones make companies provide substantive, written justification for turning someone down after a background check, provide avenues for appeal, and make the companies front the legal fees so it doesn't just turn into a game of Who Has The Most Money. They still allow employers to reject candidates for whom there are legitimate concerns. But they give candidates, as the name says, a fair chance.
https://www.nelp.org/publication/ban-the-box-fair-chance-hiring-state-and-local-guide/ https://www.nelp.org/publication/ban-the-box-fair-chance-hir...
- barry-cotter 5y ago> A 2020 study by economists Jennifer L. Doleac and Benjamin Hansen found that Ban the Box increased employer discrimination against young, low-skilled black men. The authors argue that when employers are unable to check job applicants' criminal records early in the hiring process, they instead resort to statistical discrimination against groups that include more ex-offenders.[35] A 2020 study by economist Evan K. Rose found that Ban the Box had negligible effects on ex-offenders' labor market outcomes.[36] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ban_the_Box#:~:text=Ban%20the%20box%20can%20put%20businesses%20in%20a,who%20goes%20on%20to%20reoffend%20at%20the%20job https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ban_the_Box#:~:text=Ban%20th....
- mLuby 5y ago1) Racial discrimination is itself illegal. 2) Ban the Box didn't prevent criminal background checks, it just pushed them to the end of the hiring process. So it's unsurprising that it didn't have a significant effect.