EDITORIAL: Ban the box

Americans are, in general, a forgiving lot. Humans make mistakes and deserve second chances. Thus the so-called ban-the-box movement, which seeks with the best of intentions to make it easier for ex-cons to find work and transition back into society.

In his Monday Road Warrior column, the Review-Journal’s Art Marroquin offered the story of Christopher Ellis, who served 20 years in prison for a number of serious offenses. His past transgressions would typically hinder his effort to find work upon release.

But within two months of being freed, Ellis was fueling and washing vehicles for Transdev, a Las Vegas area para-transit company. Transdev no longer includes on its employment applications a box for those to check if they’ve been convicted of a crime. Thus, the phrase “ban the box.”

“When you get out of jail, you usually go back to what you know,” Ellis told Mr. Marroquin, “so a steady job takes you another way. It does a lot of good to get you straight and successful.”

Mr. Marroquin reports that many Southern Nevada companies are voluntarily joining the movement, but state and local government agencies still demand that job applicants disclose their criminal histories. North Las Vegas, however, is now poised to become the first public-sector employer to “ban the box.”

The sentiment behind this effort is understandable, especially given that the percentage of minority men and women who have gone through the criminal justice system remains disproportionate. Encouraging employers not to dismiss such applicants out of hand is a reasonable means of reducing recidivism by helping ex-cons become productive and self-sufficient.

But a handful of new studies on the issue have also found that ban-the-box mandates can have unintended consequences. The laws “are creating a wider racial gap when it comes to which applicants are interviewed and hired,” the Wall Street Journal reported earlier this month. “Employers who remain wary of hiring ex-offenders may be discriminating based on race in their hiring decisions.”

In other words, employers who are banned by law from asking about an applicant’s criminal history may make assumptions about job seekers based on race or ethnicity.

None of this means that ban-the-box should be abandoned. It simply means that encouraging companies to adopt such policies voluntarily is likely a better approach than using legislative mandates and regulations to force reluctant employers to comply.