wow-inequalities/02-data/intermediate/wos_sample/29086a59452e184b9e7f8145a612ba46-bushway-shawn-d.-an/info.yaml

abstract: 'This study argues that employment programs for individuals exiting

  prison can benefit society even if they do not directly reduce

  recidivism, by helping to identify quickly and efficiently those

  desisters who are ready to work. We make the following basic claims:

  1. Individuals exiting prison have poor work experience, low levels of

  education, and generally qualify for only low-skill, entry-level jobs.

  Moreover, the majority will recidivate within 3 years. Employment

  training programs are designed to ameliorate these deficits, but to

  date, they have demonstrated only limited potential to improve

  employment prospects and recidivism risk.

  2. Despite a poor track record for employment-based reentry programming,

  a substantial minority of individuals exiting prison has desisted from

  crime and has the capacity to maintain stable employment.

  3. Growing evidence suggests that this desistance process occurs

  quickly-almost instantaneously-and is driven by decisions on the part of

  the individual to change.

  4. This type of instantaneous, agent-based change is difficult to

  predict using static risk prediction tools. As a result, desistance is

  fundamentally unobservable to employers and others who might wish to

  identify good employees from the group of people who have criminal

  history records. In lieu of additional information, one''s true

  desistance state will only be revealed through time. This situation is a

  classic case of a market with asymmetric information.

  5. Although growing numbers of employers refuse to hire individuals with

  criminal history records, some are in fact willing to hire from this

  pool of workers. More might be willing to do so if they could reliably

  identify desisters. The current legal environment is increasingly

  hostile to across-the-board bans on hiring individuals with criminal

  history records without documentation of business necessity.

  6. Program participation, completion, and endorsement from a training

  organization can provide a reliable signal to employers that a given

  individual has desisted and is prepared to be a productive employee, as

  long as the cost to program completion is high for those who have not

  desisted, and low for those who have desisted. Effective signals must be

  voluntary. Requiring program completion, or graduating all participants,

  renders the signal useless.

  7. Existing evidence demonstrates that program participants (or program

  completers) do in fact recidivate less often and have better employment

  outcomes than program nonparticipants (or program dropouts), even in

  cases where the program does not seem to ``work{''''} in a causal sense.

  This evidence can be taken to suggest that program completion provides

  valuable information-a signal-to the labor market.

  8. Limited anecdotal evidence suggests that some employers-among those

  willing to hire individuals with a criminal history record-may already

  be using completion of employment training programs to identify ``good

  employees{''''} among the pool of low-skill labor.

  9. The development of effective signals could create a net gain to

  society if, in the absence of signals, employers will largely avoid

  hiring individuals with criminal history records. Evidence suggests that

  individuals with prison records are exiting the labor market at higher

  rates than in the past.

  10. The signaling approach is different than risk prediction because it

  relies on actions taken by individuals to reveal information about them

  that is, by definition, unobservable. Information about program

  completion can be valuable even if the program has not caused

  individuals to change.

  11. Other actions besides completion of employment training programs

  also could function as useful signals in domains other than employment.

  Policy Implications

  Reframing the problem of reentry as a case of asymmetric information

  could potentially have dramatic implications for policy makers

  struggling to deal with the growing number of individuals with criminal

  history records, who are increasingly disconnected from the labor

  market. This disconnection occurs, at least in part, because this group

  is more readily identifiable through the use of criminal background

  checks. Although restricting the use of background checks may be

  infeasible in the current legal climate, policy makers are actively

  working to create standards for hiring individuals with criminal history

  records. For example, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission is

  currently revising its guidance for hiring individuals with criminal

  history records. It is hard to overstate the level of interest, by both

  advocates and employers, in these ongoing discussions. Research insight

  could be incorporated into government statutes that currently bar

  individuals with criminal history records from certain types of

  employment. Indirectly, such guidelines also would help individuals with

  criminal history records trying to identify themselves to employers as

  ``good bets.{''''} Key elements of a research plan needed to develop this

  idea further include:

  1. Formalizing the argument with a theoretical model that can be

  explicitly parameterized. Key elements of the argument depend crucially

  on factors such as the size of the desisting population, the outcome in

  the absence of effective signals, and the magnitude of the correlation

  between the cost of the signal and desistance. Proper specification of

  the requirements for effective signals in this context could then inform

  empirical tests of the model. . 2. Empirical testing for evidence that

  employers are already using factors such as program completion as

  signals. This testing can include surveys of employers who hire

  individuals with criminal history records to develop some idea of how

  they discriminate between individuals with criminal history records.

  Other potential methods include attempts to compare labor market

  outcomes of individuals with otherwise similar skill levels, one who has

  identifiably completed a program and one who has not. Empirical research

  testing the strength of the link between the concept of crime desistance

  and work productivity also would be valuable.

  3. Calculating the relative costs of programs that provide signals with

  more traditional risk prediction tools that take advantage of currently

  available information. Creating these programs to generate signals only

  can be justified if the additional information generates savings over

  and above what can be gained by more passive methods.

  4. Better understanding the trade-offs between maintaining voluntary

  programs to generate signals and creating mandatory programs, like

  Project HOPE, that might enhance rehabilitation. Although signaling and

  rehabilitation are not competing concepts, the requirement that signals

  be voluntarily acquired could potentially conflict with mandatory

  rehabilitation programs.

  In the short term, it might not be necessary to wait for the completion

  of this research before policy makers can make progress in this area. We

  are aware of one set of programs, often called Certificates of Relief,

  Rehabilitation, or Good Conduct, by which policy makers explicitly

  identify individuals with criminal history records who have met certain

  requirements, including program completion. In the strongest cases,

  these certificates carry with them explicit removal of statutory

  restrictions on individuals with criminal history records. In our view,

  these government-run programs are an attempt to create an explicit

  signal for employers that these individuals have desisted from crime.

  However, we are not aware of attempts to validate the standards used to

  qualify individuals for these certificates, nor are we aware of attempts

  to verify whether these signals work to create better opportunities for

  the involved individuals. We urge those involved in these programs to

  redouble their efforts to validate these promising programs.'
affiliation: 'Bushway, SD (Corresponding Author), SUNY Albany, Sch Criminal Justice,
  135 Western Ave, Albany, NY 12222 USA.

  Bushway, Shawn D., SUNY Albany, Sch Criminal Justice, Albany, NY 12222 USA.

  Bushway, Shawn D., SUNY Albany, Rockefeller Coll Publ Affairs \& Policy, Albany,
  NY 12222 USA.

  Apel, Robert, Rutgers State Univ, Sch Criminal Justice, Piscataway, NJ 08855 USA.'
author: Bushway, Shawn D. and Apel, Robert
author-email: sbushway@albany.edu
author_list:
- family: Bushway
  given: Shawn D.
- family: Apel
  given: Robert
da: '2023-09-28'
doi: 10.1111/j.1745-9133.2012.00785.x
eissn: 1745-9133
files: []
issn: 1538-6473
journal: CRIMINOLOGY \& PUBLIC POLICY
keywords: Signaling; Prisoner reentry; Desistance; Employment programs
keywords-plus: RISK; TRAJECTORIES; METAANALYSIS; RECIDIVISM; FUTURE; WORK; AGE
language: English
month: FEB
number: '1'
number-of-cited-references: '72'
pages: 17-50
papis_id: 7f2afc34a4fc36ab4e46f4a77006c562
ref: Bushway2012signalingperspective
researcherid-numbers: Apel, Robert/ABC-4270-2020
times-cited: '165'
title: 'A Signaling Perspective on Employment-Based Reentry Programming: Training
  Completion as a Desistance Signal'
type: article
unique-id: WOS:000313553000003
usage-count-last-180-days: '0'
usage-count-since-2013: '117'
volume: '11'
web-of-science-categories: Criminology \& Penology
year: '2012'