Background Checks Prevent Discrimination 12-06-2006
- By Rita Risser, attorney at law

A new study in the current issue of the Journal of Law and Economics finds that employers who perform criminal background checks end up hiring more black workers - especially black men. Employers who systematically check criminal background during the hiring process are 8.4 percentage points more likely to have hired a black applicant into their most recently filled position.

"The results are consistent with the proposition that in the absence of a criminal background check, employers use race to infer past criminal activity, especially employers with a strong stated aversion to hiring ex-offenders," write Harry J. Holzer (Georgetown Public Policy Institute), Steven Raphael (University of California, Berkeley), and Michael A. Stoll (University of California, Los Angeles).

Using a multi-city survey of more than 3,000 establishments in Atlanta, Boston, Detroit, and Los Angeles, the researchers found that the employers who are most averse to hiring ex-offenders were also the most likely to statistically discriminate. Those who perform criminal background checks are more likely to hire black applicants than those who do not, even when adjusting for proximity to black residential neighborhoods and proportion of black applicants. See http://www.emaxhealth.com/38/8363.html for article.

What This Means to You: Employers should do background checks on all employees - not just criminal records, but also checking past employers, education, and references. It not only prevents discrimination, but also stops you from making costly hiring mistakes.

 

Information here is correct at the time it is posted. Case decisions cited here may be reversed. Please do not rely on this information without consulting an attorney first.