Who gets the job? Examining the relationship between automatic expungement policies and racial discrimination in NC
Date
2020-01-25
Author
Advisor
Darity, William Sandy Jr.
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Abstract
“Unmarking” processes are among those policies intended to facilitate a reduction
in the barriers to employment for justice-involved American residents. Widely proposed
unmarking policies include “Ban the Box,” or policies that remove questions about
criminal history from initial applications; expungement policies that automatically
clear certain convictions or arrests; and targeted jobs-guarantees for justice-involved
populations.
The following thesis isolates one specific unmarking policy—an automatic expungement
policy—and investigates its implications for white and black men. Through an experimental
survey distributed to 300 North Carolina adults via Amazon’s Mechanical Turk, the
data provide preliminary answers to the guiding research question: “Would the implementation
of an automatic expungement policy for non-violent charges at the state level influence
disparities in job prospects for white and black male applicants in North Carolina?”
By comparing differences in willingness to give candidate callbacks “before” and “after”
the implementation of an expungement policy, the thesis will draw conclusions about
the effectiveness of such policies in reintegrating—or “unmarking”—justice-involved
North Carolinians. In the final section, this paper offers a series of policy recommendations
for lawmakers interested in “unmarking.”
Type
Honors thesisPermalink
https://hdl.handle.net/10161/19774Citation
Abrams, Leah (2020). Who gets the job? Examining the relationship between automatic expungement policies
and racial discrimination in NC. Honors thesis, Duke University. Retrieved from https://hdl.handle.net/10161/19774.Collections
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