When is it Safe To Hire Someone With a Criminal Record?

New Carnegie Mellon Study Provides Empirical Basis For Employers To Use in
Assessment of Prior Criminal Records

PITTSBURGH, May 27 /PRNewswire/ -- Carnegie Mellon University researchers have
created a model for providing empirical evidence on when an ex-convict has
been "clean" long enough to be considered "redeemed" for employment purposes.

(Logo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20020422/CMULOGO )

The new study, which appears in the current issue of Criminology, estimates
that after five years of staying clean an individual with a criminal record is
of no greater risk of committing another crime than other individuals of the
same age. The research comes at a time when President Barack Obama's crime
agenda includes breaking down employment barriers for people who have a prior
criminal record, but who have stayed clean since their earlier offense.

"In the past, employers had no way of knowing when it might be safe to look
past a criminal record," said Alfred Blumstein, co-author of the study and the
J. Erik Jonsson University Professor of Urban Systems and Operations Research
at Carnegie Mellon's H. John Heinz III College. "Hiring an ex-offender was a
totally arbitrary decision. We believe our model can change that and help
provide employers with data in making such decisions. Or it can be used by
state criminal-record repositories in deciding when a prior arrest is too
'stale' to warrant distributing." Blumstein's co-author is Kiminori Nakamura,
a Ph.D. student at the Heinz College.

The issue of employing ex-offenders has become more of a problem, as a vast
majority of larger U.S. employers now perform criminal background checks,
Blumstein said. He noted that advances in information technology allow
criminal records to be kept longer and to be distributed easily, and employers
are concerned about liability risk if the former offender commits a new crime.
Blumstein said this makes it difficult for a large number of people who have
committed crimes when they were much younger, but have stayed clean since
then.

The study, funded by The National Institute of Justice, used criminal-history
records of more than 88,000 first-time offenders in New York in 1980. Most
committed new crimes within the first few years after their initial arrest,
but only a small minority had a new arrest after staying clean for at least
five years. After determining whether the offenders had remained clean during
the ensuing 25 years, the data on the 1980 offenders was compared against two
comparison groups. The study determined that after about five years those in
the offender group were at or below the risk of arrest as people in the
general population who were the same age. A more demanding comparison is with
people of the same age who had never been arrested. Those with a prior record
had to stay clean longer, but their risk could be close enough even to that
low-risk group.

Future studies will address other states and sampling years to assess the
consistency of results. This effort is intended to develop standards for
employers and record repositories to help reduce the handicaps imposed on
those who had committed a crime when they were younger.

About Carnegie Mellon:Carnegie Mellon (http://www.cmu.edu) is a top private
research university with world-class programs in areas ranging from science,
technology and business, to public policy, the humanities and the fine arts.
More than 11,000 students in the university's seven schools and colleges
benefit from a small student-to-faculty ratio and an education characterized
by its focus on creating and implementing solutions for real problems,
interdisciplinary collaboration and innovation. A global university, Carnegie
Mellon's main campus in the United States is in Pittsburgh, Pa. It has
campuses in California's Silicon Valley and Qatar, and programs in Asia,
Australia and Europe. The university is in the midst of a $1 billion
comprehensive campaign, titled "Inspire Innovation: The Campaign for Carnegie
Mellon University," which aims to build its endowment, support faculty,
students and innovative research, and enhance the physical campus with
equipment and facility improvements. For more about Carnegie Mellon, visit
http://www.cmu.edu/about/.

SOURCE Carnegie Mellon University

Teresa Thomas of Carnegie Mellon, +1-412-268-2900, thomas@cmu.edu