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                            Funding & Awards
 "Targeting the "Absence" in a Desistance Framework: Balancing Risk and Rehabilitation in Mandated Criminal Background Check Employment Decisions."
Award Information
Awardee
              The Research Foundation for the SUNY, University at Albany
Award #
              2016-R2-CX-0017
Funding Category
              Competitive
Location
                    Albany, NY
Congressional District
              20
Status
              Closed
Funding First Awarded
              2016
Total funding (to date)
              $31,999
Original Solicitation
              NIJ FY 16 Graduate Research Fellowship Program in the Social and Behavioral Sciences
Description of original award (Fiscal Year 2016, $31,999)
Researchers use notions of "desistance" to conceptualize the absence of criminal justice system involvement and individual change. While most individuals eventually "age out" of the criminal justice
system, it is challenging to predict who will successfully maintain desistance. One policy option is to simply wait. In the first component of my dissertation (near completion), I examine the effects of a time since last conviction policy. I find that individuals cleared to work because they surpass a 1 O year conviction-free threshold experience meaningful improvements in employment and earnings, but not recidivism.
These results prompt the studies that comprise the dissertation fellowship, which ask whether there are alternative policy options to help employers identify desisters before a decade passes. I examine the
desistance maintenance process through an employment lens by considering how decision makers balance risk and rehabilitation in criminal background check employment decisions. I have three main objectives:
review the relevant literature to determine key factors that identify desisters; develop an initial framework in a particular decision making setting; and test this framework in a different occupational context.
Employing a mixed methods approach, I will utilize two unique samples of individuals who apply for a job in New York State, are denied on the basis of a criminal record, and contest the decision. In the first study, I will use an inductive content analysis approach to analyze judicial appeal decisions for state-licensed occupations and develop an initial framework for how decision makers balance "rehabilitation" and "risk." Interviews with law clinic staff who prepare appeals will aid in fully understanding the legal and social
context.
In the second study, I examine a sample comprised of individuals provisionally hired to work in unlicensed positions involving direct access to patients and residents in licensed healthcare facilities (this is an
extension of an ongoing partnership with the Department of Health, Division of Criminal Justice Services, and Department of Labor; NIJ grant 2012-MU-MU-0048). Using a regression-based approach, I will test
which rehabilitative documents are correlated with successfully overturning a decision, and under which conditions. I will also examine which rehabilitative documents presented during the appeals process are
correlated with re-arrest.
The overall purpose of this dissertation is to advance theoretical knowledge of the desistance maintenance process through a decision maker lens. These studies aim to provide guidance to employers making difficult decisions and to policymakers invested in improving employment opportunities for individuals with criminal
records.ca/ncf



  
Grant-Funded Publications
        
                      Criminal Records, Positive Credentials and Recidivism: Incorporating Evidence of Rehabilitation Into Criminal Background Check Employment Decisions
                  Credentialing Decisions and Criminal Records: A Narrative Approach

  
Date Created: August 16, 2016
    
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                  Developing and Validating Standards for Dental Cementum Age-at-Death and Season-of-Death Estimation
                  Developmental Validation of a Novel Multi-analyte Recovery Method for Trace Biological Samples
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