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The Effect of Hawaii’s Ban The Box Law on Repeat Offending

American Journal of Criminal Justice volume 40, pages 336–352 (2015)Cite this article

Abstract

The social stigma accompanying an official criminal record hinders the ability of an individual to acquire quality and stable employment, which is problematic because of the often reported nexus between unemployment and criminal behavior. Ban the box laws that limit an employer’s use of criminal background checks during the hiring process are being established across the country to help integrate ex-offenders into the labor force. The current study investigates whether Hawaii’s 1998 ban the box law reduced repeat offending in Honolulu County. Logistic regression results show that a criminal defendant prosecuted in Honolulu for a felony crime was 57 % less likely to have a prior criminal conviction after the implementation of Hawaii’s ban the box law. By mollifying the social stigma attached to a criminal record during the hiring process, Hawaii’s ban the box law proved to be extremely successful in attenuating repeat felony offending.

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Fig. 1

Notes

  1. The adverse social consequences engendered by a criminal record date back to ancient Greece (Damaska, 1968). More recently, Buckler and Travis (2003) identify a discernible shift in the adverse social repercussions of a criminal record from political consequences to ones designed to protect the public

  2. The secondary labor market is characterized by jobs that have low pay, high turnover and few opportunities for advancement (Reich, Gordon, & Edwards, 1973)

  3. However, while incarceration in prison decreases a person’s wage upon release, the length of incarceration does not seem to have a robust influence on wages (Kling, 2006) and the wage penalty experienced by the released offender tends to dissipate over time (Pettit & Lyons, 2007)

  4. Crime can also furnish individuals with nonmonetary rewards such as respect among peers (Bourgois, 1995).

  5. Only about 35 % of inmates in U.S. correctional facilities earned a high school diploma or higher, compared with 82 % of the general population (Harlow, 2003)

  6. The data were collected using a two-stage stratified sampling procedure that weighted the cases accordingly. A stratified sample was used in the first stage to select the counties. A systematic sample of felony filings within each selected county was drawn in the second stage. The weight of each case is equal to the inverse probability of selection into the sample. These data are archived at the Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Science Research at the University of Michigan

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Criminal Justice, Florida International University, 11200 SW 8th Street - PCA 263B, Miami, FL, 33199, USA

    Stewart J. D’Alessio, Lisa Stolzenberg & Jamie L. Flexon

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  1. Stewart J. D’Alessio
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  2. Lisa Stolzenberg
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  3. Jamie L. Flexon
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Correspondence to Stewart J. D’Alessio.

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D’Alessio, S.J., Stolzenberg, L. & Flexon, J.L. The Effect of Hawaii’s Ban The Box Law on Repeat Offending. Am J Crim Just 40, 336–352 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12103-014-9251-9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12103-014-9251-9

Keywords

  • Ban the box laws
  • Criminal record
  • Social stigma
  • Labeling theory