Dive Brief:
- With nearly one-third of adults having some type of prior arrest or conviction record, those 70 million would-be employees could be a strong source of talent for a market that has high demand, reports say.
- A recent study from researchers at Harvard University examined the nation's largest employer – the U.S. military – and its practice of allowing those with felony or misdemeanor records to enlist after they obtain a waiver.
- As it turned out, enlistees with prior offenses or arrests perform relatively the same as those with clean records, and are no more likely to be discharged for bad behavior. In fact, the research found they are even more likely to receive promotions than those without prior offenses.
Dive Insight:
With trends such as "ban the box" picking up momentum nationwide, this study is good news for employers, as it could alter the stereotypes employers have when deciding whether to consider an applicant with a record, Michelle Natividad Rodriguez, a senior staff attorney at the National Employment Law Project, told CBS News.
The study used the Freedom of Information Act to collect data on about 1.3 million enlistees, both with and without criminal records, between 2002 to 2009. Until now, CBS reports, there was hardly any research examining how people with criminal backgrounds perform at work. At the same time, biases on hiring workers with arrests and convictions abound.
Rodriguez told CBS that the research findings, once published, are likely to be "very influential in this larger movement" to convince employers to consider hiring ex-offenders, because it deals directly with the ongoing concern that employees with records can still be good employees.
