KALAMAZOO (WKZO-AM) — The city of Kalamazoo “banned the box” years ago. Just last month, the city commission adopted a “fair chance” policy that requires that any firm that does business with the city also eliminate the box on their application that asks whether an applicant has a criminal record.
It was done to improve the chances of qualified candidates who are ex-offenders, but a new study co-authored by researchers at the University of Michigan and Princeton say it actually may hurt the odds of all minorities getting a job, whether they have criminal histories or not.
Test applications were sent out to personnel officials at firms that asked candidates about their criminal histories. At those firms, they would call back seven percent more whites than minorities with equal qualifications. The firms were tested after “ban the box” policies were adopted and the gap between whites and minority candidates jumped to 45 percent, according to their study.
The researchers say human resource workers would guess which candidates might have criminal histories, also eliminating candidates that had no records. More often than not, they apparently eliminated blacks and hispanics, based on their own prejudices and stereotypes.
Other Studies conducted by the Brookings Institute and at the University of Chicago appear to have similar outcomes. They find that the policies may indeed help ex-offenders but at the same time they may hurt equally qualified minorities, whether they have records or not.
