Ban the Box? An Effort to Stop Discrimination May Actually Increase It

Transcription

1 Page 1 of 5 Ban the Box? An Effort to Stop Discrimination May Actually Increase It Economic View By SENDHIL MULLAINATHAN AUG. 19, 2016 Policies aimed at ending discrimination against people with criminal records may actually have the unintended consequence of increasing racial discrimination. That, at least, is the finding of a fascinating new study that focused on so-called ban the box regulations rules that prohibit initial job applications from asking prospective employees to check a box indicating whether they have a criminal history. It has implications for nearly all policies aimed at eliminating racial inequities. When we try to end discrimination without addressing the underlying causes of discriminatory behavior, our efforts may accomplish little and may even backfire. Efforts to ban the box are racially charged. As Bruce Western, a Harvard sociologist, documented in his 2009 book, Punishment and Inequality in America, many of those with criminal histories are black, particularly among the roughly 30 percent of black males who do not have high school diplomas. By 2013, nearly 70

2 Page 2 of 5 percent of black male high school dropouts in their early 30s had served time in prison. Without jobs, their situation is bleak, yet they can t get past the first step of a job application if they disclose their criminal history. Ban the box measures are intended to address this problem: They defer this question until job seekers have a foot in the door and can better explain their personal histories in an interview. More than 100 states, cities and counties have enacted such policies. The White House has instituted a ban on questions about criminal history on federal job applications, and it has encouraged private sector employers to follow suit. Yet a working paper by Amanda Agan, a Princeton economist, and Sonja Starr, a legal scholar at the University of Michigan, suggests that at least in some cases, these policies may merely make life more difficult for black people without criminal histories. In Ban the Box, Criminal Records, and Statistical Discrimination: A Field Experiment, Ms. Agan and Ms. Starr focused on employers in New Jersey and New York City, both of which enacted ban the box rules in The researchers sent fictitious job applications to employers before and after the regulations took effect, focusing on jobs for candidates with limited work experience, no postsecondary education and no specialized skills. Some applications were randomly assigned a criminal history and some were not; some were assigned a first name found to be more common among American blacks (like Tyree), while others were given names that have been more common among whites (like Scott). Before the regulations took effect, candidates with criminal histories were far less likely to be called back, irrespective of race. After the regulations took effect, though, things changed. Lacking the ability to discern criminal history, employers became much less likely to call back any

3 Page 3 of 5 apparently black applicant. They seemed to treat all black applicants now as if they might have a criminal past. These were big and disheartening effects: Banning the box extended discrimination to virtually all black applicants. But where should we go from here? It would be wrong to conclude from one study that these regulations are a bad idea. Research continues, and while other studies have reached similar conclusions, the verdict is not in yet. Perhaps more important, there are sound arguments for banning the box that transcend the empirical data. We might not want to allow a practice that could be seen as a crude, extralegal form of punishment. Ethical concerns could sway us even in the face of these findings. Yet the study illustrates a deeper economic lesson: Policies often go astray when we try to change behavior while leaving the motive for that behavior unchanged. Employers wanted to avoid hiring workers with criminal histories. Preventing them from finding out about those histories at the outset of the application process did not change their underlying desire. They simply expressed it in another way: by using race as a proxy for criminal history and increasing discrimination against all low-skilled African-Americans. This pernicious result is the economists law of unintended consequences. Policy makers can constrain only a few of the large spectrum of choices people make. If motives remain unchanged, there remain many unregulated ways of expressing them. For example, when landlords find that their properties have risen in value, they may want to raise the rent. If the government imposes rent control, landlords find other ways to increase revenue. This is also a challenge in fighting discrimination: When we try to curb certain behaviors, the underlying discriminatory impulse manifests itself elsewhere. If we prevent lenders from screening out African-Americans, they might avoid lending to whole neighborhoods.

4 Page 4 of 5 This is not meant to be an argument for doing nothing. Instead, it is an argument for picking our battles wisely. First, we should actually try to change beliefs and preferences. Economists usually take them as given, yet over the course of decades, civil rights advocates have done astounding work in changing hearts and minds. For example, in 1958, a Gallup poll showed that only 4 percent of Americans favored interracial marriage. By 2013, that number was 87 percent. Second, we should directly tackle the grim realities that give rise to discriminatory impulses. Some employers associate African-Americans with crime reflexively out of pure racism. Yet clearly others are responding to the all too real correlation between crime and race. This is particularly disturbing when we realize that public policy helped to create this correlation. Generations of poverty, neglect of young people who are at risk and an inequitable criminal justice system all contribute to the mass incarceration of low-income African-Americans. Employers attitudes are merely a symptom. Rather than focus on the symptom, why not target the disease? I do not mean to imply this will be easy. Both political will and experimentation will be needed to find solutions. But they are there to be found. In a recent paper, for example, Sara Heller, a criminologist at the University of Pennsylvania, showed that a summer jobs program for at-risk youth not only gives valuable work experience, but it also reduces their chance of committing crimes. For them, the criminal-history box will not matter. This is the appeal of addressing root causes: The problem is not mitigated, it is erased. Perhaps we should devote more of our efforts toward reaching the day when there will be no box to ban simply because employers will see little reason to have one. Sendhil Mullainathan is a professor of economics at Harvard. The Upshot provides news, analysis and graphics about politics, policy and everyday life. Follow us on Facebook and Twitter. Sign up for our newsletter.

5 Page 5 of 5 A version of this article appears in print on August 21, 2016, on page BU6 of the New York edition with the headline: An Effort to Stop Discrimination May Actually Increase It The New York Times Company