DOI: 10.3886/icpsr03599
title: Consequences of a Criminal Record for Employment Opportunity in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, 2002
title: Archival Version

description: This study examined employers' policies and practices for
 hiring entry-level workers in the Milwaukee metropolitan area. The
 study consisted of telephone interviews conducted in the spring of
 2002 with 177 employers who had advertised entry-level openings in the
 prior six months. The survey included questions about the company,
 such as size, industry, employee turnover, and racial composition,
 questions about hiring procedures, questions about the last worker
 hired for a position not requiring a college degree, and questions
 about the employer's attitude toward various kinds of marginalized
 workers. An emphasis in the survey was placed on assessing employers'
 attitudes about and experience with applicants with criminal
histories.
description: This study investigated how and why employers 
 make the hiring decisions they do. Questions asked included: (1) How 
 do employers' reactions to applicants with criminal records compare 
 to their reactions to other groups of marginalized workers? (2) How 
 does the type of crime or the context of the sanction affect 
 employers' evaluations of applicants with criminal records? (3) What 
 kinds of formal screens do employers use to evaluate applicants for 
 entry-level jobs? and (4) How do the characteristics of the job, the 
 applicant pool, the customer base, and the company (location, size, 
 industry, etc.) affect employers' willingness to consider applicants 
with criminal records?
description: Data consist of 177 completed telephone interviews
 with employers. The survey was administered by the Michigan State 
 Survey Center. Calls were made to each establishment, asking to speak 
 with the person in charge of hiring. The baseline survey instrument 
 was developed by Harry Holzer et al. (1996, 2002). It includes 
 questions about the company, such as size, industry, employee 
 turnover, and racial composition, questions about hiring procedures, 
 questions about the last worker hired for a position not requiring a 
 college degree, and questions about the employer's attitude toward 
 various kinds of marginalized workers. In addition, several vignette 
 items were added to assess employers' reactions to applicants 
 convicted of different types of crimes or who had received different 
 types of sanctions. Roughly half of employers were read a vignette in 
 which the subject was presented as White, with the other half 
receiving a vignette in which the subject was presented as Black.
description: Variables include the business's location, its main
 product, whether it was minority-owned, its distance from public
 transportation, how long it would take to get from the downtown
 business area to the business using public transportation, total
 employees, number of temporary employees, number of unskilled
 employees, number of positions that did not require a college degree,
 race of employees in non-college degree positions, percentage of
 employees covered by a collective bargaining agreement, number of
 workers hired in past year, number of workers who left the business in
 the last year, and number of current job vacancies. Other variables
 focus on details of the application and hiring process for the last
 employee hired into a position that did not require a college degree,
 sex, age, race, and education of that employee, kinds of tasks
 regularly performed by that employee, kind of education and work
 experience needed for that position, the compensation for that
 position, number of hours per week usually worked in that position,
 whether health insurance was provided for that position, and
 possibility of promotion for someone in that position. Additional
 items include whether the business would hire an applicant on welfare,
 an applicant with a GED, an applicant with a criminal record, an
 applicant with only part-time work experience, or an applicant who had
 been unemployed for over a year, whether the company required
 applicants to take a drug test, what percentage of drug tests had been
 positive in the last year, whether the company asked applicants about
 their criminal background, percentage of applicants that reported a
 prior conviction in the last year, whether the company performed
 background checks, percentage of background checks in the last year
 that found a criminal record, how background checks were performed,
 number of employees company hired with a criminal record in the last
 year, number of those still employed, how positive the company's
 experience with those employees was, the percentage of applicants who
 were Black, White, and Hispanic, the percentage of customers who were
 Black, White, and Hispanic, and the respondent's title, race, age,
 education, and gender. Also included are answers to questions that
described hypothetical applicants.
description: Response Rates: The final survey sample of 177 respondents
 represented a 51-percent response rate. Four firms were dropped from 
 the survey sample and were excluded from the denominator for the 
calculation of the response rate.
description: Presence of Common Scales: Several Likert-type scales were used.
description: Job openings for entry-level positions (defined as job
 requiring no previous experience and no education past high school)
 were identified from the classified section of the MILWAUKEE JOURNAL
 SENTINEL's Sunday edition between June and December 2001. During this
 same time period, a supplemental sample was drawn from JOBNET, a 
 state-sponsored Web site for employment listings. All job openings 
within a 25-mile radius of downtown Milwaukee were included.
description: Datasets: 
DS1: Consequences of a Criminal Record for Employment Opportunity in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, 2002
description: Employers in the Milwaukee area who advertised for
entry-level jobs between June and December 2001.
description: The user guide, codebook, and data collection
 instrument are provided by ICPSR as Portable Document Format (PDF)
 files. The PDF file format was developed by Adobe Systems,
 Incorporated and can be accessed using PDF reader software, such as
 the Adobe Acrobat Reader. Information on how to obtain a copy of the
Acrobat Reader is provided on the ICPSR Web site.