NY- Study could ease concerns over hiring ex-offenders

See Carnegie Mellon info (and contact person) about the study below the USA Today news article. Also, while I am quite sure the result of the study would also be applicable to sex offenders, they are exempted from the Second Chance Act. However, if sex offenders had this study it is likely it would help them convince a potential employer to hire them. Please see they are made aware of this study.

7-5-2009 New York:

A study funded by the Justice Department concludes that over time accused robbers, burglars and batterers pose no greater risk to employers than job candidates in the general population.

In a review of 88,000 arrestees in New York state, Carnegie Mellon University investigators found, for example, that after about 7 1/2 years the "hazard rate" for an 18-year-old first-time arrestee for robbery declined to the same rate as an 18-year-old in the general population. For 18-year-olds arrested for aggravated assault, it took about four years to reduce the risk.

Hazard rates are calculated based on the time the suspect remains free from re-arrest. The calculation also accounts for the fact that risk of arrest generally declines with age.

"We believe that our analysis provides the criminal justice community with the first scientific method for estimating how long is long enough for someone with a prior record" to no longer be considered a special risk, according to the study authored by Carnegie Mellon criminologist Alfred Blumstein.

Blumstein and other criminal justice analysts say the ongoing research could ease employers' concerns about hiring former offenders and perhaps spark new legislative proposals to limit the liability for employers who do hire them.

With more than 600,000 people expected to be released from prisons this year and entering the turbulent U.S. labor market, some criminal justice analysts say the research marks an important step to changing the perception that the criminal justice system is a revolving door.

"This attempts to answer the question of when a person can break that cycle (of crime)," says George Mason University criminologist Faye Taxman.

Blumstein says "redemption" for prior offenders has become increasingly difficult as potential employers demand more background checks.

The Society for Human Resource Management estimates that 80% of U.S. employers perform background checks. An estimated 74 million criminal records were contained in automated databases across the U.S., according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics.

"Computerized criminal records can have long memories, and this (study) is intended to provide guidance for imposing some limits to that memory," Blumstein says.

The study focused on three offenses — robbery, burglary and aggravated assault — because they represented some of the largest sample numbers.

Murder was not included in the report and will not be part of future reports, because, Blumstein says, "nobody fully redeems a murderer."

"People are finally starting to get it. They would rather see people working, than to shut people out," says Veronica Ballard, a vice president of the Safer Foundation, which helps ex-offenders find work.

Rep. Danny Davis, D-Ill., a sponsor of the Second Chance Act legislation designed to re-integrate offenders back into society, says any measure that might encourage potential employers to hire ex-offenders is a "powerful" tool. ..Source.. by Kevin Johnson, USA TODAY



When is it Safe To Hire Someone With a Criminal Record?

New Carnegie Mellon Study Provides Empirical Basis For Employers To Use in Assessment of Prior Criminal Records

PITTSBURGH—Carnegie Mellon University researchers have created a model for providing empirical evidence on when an ex-convict has been “clean” long enough to be considered “redeemed” for employment purposes.

The new study, which appears in the current issue of Criminology (June 2009), estimates that after five years of staying clean an individual with a criminal record is of no greater risk of committing another crime than other individuals of the same age. The research comes at a time when President Barack Obama’s crime agenda includes breaking down employment barriers for people who have a prior criminal record, but who have stayed clean since their earlier offense.

“In the past, employers had no way of knowing when it might be safe to look past a criminal record,” said Alfred Blumstein, co-author of the study and the J. Erik Jonsson University Professor of Urban Systems and Operations Research at Carnegie Mellon’s H. John Heinz III College. “Hiring an ex-offender was a totally arbitrary decision. We believe our model can change that and help provide employers with data in making such decisions. Or it can be used by state criminal-record repositories in deciding when a prior arrest is too ‘stale’ to warrant distributing.” Blumstein’s co-author is Kiminori Nakamura, a Ph.D. student at the Heinz College.

The issue of employing ex-offenders has become more of a problem, as a vast majority of larger U.S. employers now perform criminal background checks, Blumstein said. He noted that advances in information technology allow criminal records to be kept longer and to be distributed easily, and employers are concerned about liability risk if the former offender commits a new crime. Blumstein said this makes it difficult for a large number of people who have committed crimes when they were much younger, but have stayed clean since then.

The study, funded by The National Institute of Justice, used criminal-history records of more than 88,000 first-time offenders in New York in 1980. Most committed new crimes within the first few years after their initial arrest, but only a small minority had a new arrest after staying clean for at least five years. After determining whether the offenders had remained clean during the ensuing 25 years, the data on the 1980 offenders was compared against two comparison groups. The study determined that after about five years those in the offender group were at or below the risk of arrest as people in the general population who were the same age. A more demanding comparison is with people of the same age who had never been arrested. Those with a prior record had to stay clean longer, but their risk could be close enough even to that low-risk group.

Future studies will address other states and sampling years to assess the consistency of results. This effort is intended to develop standards for employers and record repositories to help reduce the handicaps imposed on those who had committed a crime when they were younger. ..Source.. Contact: Teresa Thomas
412-268-2900 thomas@cmu.edu