School of Public Policy

Kevin Karami:

Thank you so much, Professor Oselin for taking the time to join us on the second in-person recording policy chats. It's really good to have you here. I think the topic we're gonna be covering today is really interesting and also important. I know it's a topic that students and faculty and this campus overall focuses on prison to implement. But I think the specific act we're talking about today in particular is interesting. I know a lot of students are interested in criminal justice and generate, and I think this is a really important lot to know about in this space. So before we kind of go deep into the weeds of the issue, I figured it'd be good to set a foundation for our audience. 

Sharon Oselin:

Okay. 

Kevin Karami:

If you can, please briefly describe the main and the reasons behind the California Fair Chance Act. There's no Why was this policy specifically passing? Also why the provisions that were included in the policy. Maybe me briefly talk about the immediate impacts. 

Sharon Oselin:

Okay, so I see the California Fair Chance Act as being connected to the larger decarbonization policies that have been passed in California in particular over the past decade or so. So I think with growing public awareness and legislators awareness about some of the harms of mass incarceration in particular and the consequences of that. I think there's been significantly retooled efforts to focus on policies and laws that help reduce mess inequalities, but also deal with some of the consequences for those who have been impact - justice impacted in various ways. So I see the California Fair Chance Act as kind of playing into that larger practice of California. It certainly is not perfect. These, these policies, some are better than others. There's problems with them, of course. But I think as a state, we're kind of at the vanguard compared to most other states in terms of enacting some of these changes and trying to tackle and dismantle to some extent mass incarceration. We have a long ways to go, of course, in terms of the California Fair chance, specifically, this builds on many states. I believe it's 31, but I could be wrong about that Not figure have enacted ban the box practices. So other states are certainly trying to address some of the consequences for formerly incarcerated individuals or individuals with who has some kind of criminal record of some sorts and ban the box policies have actually research shows they're mixed in terms of their efficacy. So some find that they work in terms of opening doors for employment, opportunities for folks and decreasing some of the discrimination. Other studies find that there's other ways employers can actually use to skirt those policies and still discriminate against people with records. The California Fair Chance Act build upon the ban the box kind of approach and policy in that it is, I call it like a ban the box on steroids. And I'm happy to walk through exactly what that entails because it's a multi faceted policy. And so the California Fair Chance Act includes banning the box. It also prohibits employers from conducting background checks until after conditional offer of employment. It mandates an individualized assessment if employers find a record in terms of explaining why the offers rescinded. And then it also provides a provision where individuals can appeal that rescinded offer. So I look at the California Fair Chance Act, which by the way, draws on the EEOC is recommended guidelines in terms of eradicating or less than at least discrimination. I see this as kind of following through longer in the process, the employment and hiring process where it's ban the box just focuses primarily on the initial step with the application. Strips that question. This is much more consistent throughout the process. I'm not sure I answered all your questions, but 

Kevin Karami:

No that was really good and I think there's a great foundation for our audience to understand.

Catherine Mah:

Yes. And thank you for sharing about the California Fair Chance Act. And he talked about banning the box and how it's imperfect. So we're kinda wondering what are the key pros and cons and how effective has this act specifically been after being passed? 

Sharon Oselin:

Yeah, that's a great question. As I said, ban the box is kinda mixed results in terms of the studies that have been done on it. I would say it's maybe better than nothing, but it's certainly imperfect. And some, there's some states that have enacted Fair Chance Act laws. But California, I would say, is the most strange and it applies to public employers as well, which is kind of rare. Typically a lot of these apply to private firms. So California does bolt. And we don't actually know a lot about the efficacy of the Fair Chance Act, specifically the California Fair Chance Act. So my colleagues and I have actually  done a study to do surveys with employers and the empire to try to get a sense of what exactly they're thinking is about it, their awareness of the California Fair Chance Act and what their current hiring practices are. And we have some pretty interesting findings. Do would you like me to go into those are okay. Yeah, it's pretty interesting so far. Um, this is a publication where we're working on getting out there. But there's some very interesting results so far. In a nutshell, hiring decision-makers remain reluctant to hire individuals who possess records. We know that based on our data and our surveys, we've done 524 surveys with decision-makers from companies with five or more employees. And we did the survey in 2021. And the survey also includes an experiment that designs to test whether applicant appeals are ineffective strategy to counter some of this, employer's resistance to hiring goes with records. So roughly 75% of hiring decision-makers were unwilling to seriously consider an applicant with a drug property or violent conviction. Drug property and violent convictions remain greater barriers to employment compared to other stigma, stigmatize characteristics, including possessing a GED, employment gaps and low credit scores. So these are still highly stigmatized characteristics. We find. Also historic patterns persist with employers and non-public facing and labor intensive industries. And those with high percentages of unskilled positions have more favorable background check policies and a greater willingness to hire applicants with records compared to other types of employers. So that's one component. The other component is that we see lots of violations of the friction side, unfortunately. So 50% of hiring decision-makers indicated that their employer change their background check policy after the fair chance was enacted. So that seems positive. However, we find that nearly 80% of hiring decision-makers selfreported violating the Fair Chance Act by considering criminal history prior to conditional offer of employment. So that's actually a pretty troubling when we think about the efficacy of a policy that's problematic. And violations also are largely consistent across employers irrespective of firm characteristics like company size and hiring decision-makers who reported their employer change their policy to be fair chance at compliance, whereas likely to consider criminal history in violation of the Fair Chance Act as those whose employer did not update their policy. So it's kind of an interesting finding as well and piece of this. So that's kinda what our preliminary findings are at this paper. And we were a little surprised that it was such a high number actually. And on top of that, a lot of employers were not really aware of what the fair chance at gloves or if they were, it was very a general sort of, I would say, superficial understanding of all the components because it's a complicated policy. 

Kevin Karami:

Yeah. That's really interesting. I had to quick follow-up to that. 

Sharon Oselin:

Sure. 

Kevin Karami:

I'm not sure if you have the exact numbers. Yeah. But I figured it'd be a good question that's asked an expert slid off that the California Fair Chance Act. But are there any differences when it comes to how employers view someone who apply it to a position at their company or their differences based on the reason they were convicted in the past. So are there any differences that exist if an employer finds out this person committed a violent crime versus maybe a crime against the state like a drug offense? 

Sharon Oselin:

Yes. 

Kevin Karami:

Are there any differences or is it more so jumbled up together? 

Sharon Oselin:

Yeah, that's actually a great question. There's been some studies on this and that was actually our appeal component tried to tease out length of time, and we did ask them questions about the type offense that the person was convicted of. And so we find ultimately based on a lot of research, that employers are less likely to hire those with some kind of violence record and more likely to hire those who have misdemeanor offenses versus felony offenses, which is not altogether surprising, but there's a lot of considerations that hiring decision-makers take into account for when they consider hiring someone with a record. And these kinds of nuances exist and actually do pretty somewhat different outcomes across the board. 

Kevin Karami:

Yeah, that's really interesting. That was one of the main things that I was thinking about. And the topic was, is it more of a holistic to employers? Do they see that you were convicted in the past and just say, they're absolutely not work. It's interesting that they actually, there are differences that exist depending on how long the sentence was, what exactly the crime was. Kind of going back to the main topic,  this is probably a really important question. Does historically maybe in both our region in California, maybe even the country in general. Historically, how challenging has re-entry been for previously convicted individuals? And can you maybe specifically outline the main obstacles that exist, like the path to actually get back and reintegrate into society. 

Sharon Oselin:

Individuals with records have a lot of obstacles to contend with. We know in the re-entry literature that one of the biggest challenges is finding employment. And we know that employment is often correlated with whether someone re-offend returns to prisons. So there's many factors that are important to the course, such as securing housing, family relationships, social supports, and so forth. But employment is huge, a huge factor in predicting someone's success, right, or successful reentry. So that's why we're interested in this component, this component of employment so much. And I think that's why there are a lot of policies and talk about policies that specifically target employment opportunities and reducing some of those discriminatory practices and employers possess. I would say some of the things include from the employer side and include liability and risk concerns. Those are some of the things that they express that they're worried about in terms of making these decisions. We also know there's a practice of statistical discrimination that occurs. So even in well intentioned policies such as Ban the box policies, employers satisfying that employers can resort to statistical discrimination practices. So they might not know if you have a record or not, but they might infer that based on gaps in employment history, race, ethnicity, other kinds of things. And so they might just be on the safe side, they might just automatically rejected from the pool. And so we know that employers can circumvent wet, even well-intentioned policies and continue to discriminate in terms of hiring. I guess those with records. And of course, stigma is a huge factor in terms and barrier for individuals to successfully obtain employment. So that's the intention on many of these policies as well to shield them from stigma. But of course, we know that there's always a lot of discretion on the hiring decision maker site as well in terms of making these decisions and the considerations that go into that. So I think it's an uphill battle for sure for individuals trying to gain employment, particularly if they've been incarcerated for a long period of time and have more severe kind of offenses on the record. So yeah, I think it's all the things are shifting a little bit. I think there's a lot of work to do on a long way to go still? 

Catherine Mah:

Yes, absolutely. I know you are kinda talking about how important becoming employed is with reentry. And you'd kinda touched upon the idea of stigma. So how can we better fight the stigma of prior conviction for employment? What can the criminal justice system do as well? 

Sharon Oselin:

Yeah, I don't see this as much about being really something that the criminal justice system can do as well. Besides, of course, decarboxylation and other kinds of things. I don't feel like this falls as much in their purview. Obviously, they can do things like restrict access to someone's record. If there's online sources were disclosed that they could be more stringent about making sure that information is not revealed. That is something that could potentially do. But I think mostly it lives with advocacy efforts and policy efforts to change, challenge this, these longstanding practices and challenge the stigma that's associated with those who have a history of incarceration or some justice impacted in some way. There are actually a lot of advocacy organizations and non-profits working on this issue that lobby legislators and really try to create a lot of educational awareness about the harm that these hiring practices can do for individuals. Particularly if we're, if we say we're interested in getting people actually a second chance. We say we want to encourage successful re-entry. We need to put our money where our mouths are right. And so we need to be able to actually provide services, resources for people, training for people so that the transition is smoother and so that they're not shut out at the very beginning of this process and discriminated against despite being released and moving on with their lives. And so I think that that's a struggle. But there's some interesting new bill, SB eight or nine. Who's that was introduced in the Senate, I believe in February or March of this year. That basically is trying to earmark money for better  enforcement of the California Fair Chan site because that's something that is lacking. So we have this policy, but there doesn't seem to be very good enforcement of this policy. And so there's a new bill that was introduced and we'll see where it goes. But ultimately it kind of puts more teeth behind the policy itself in terms of enforcement and creates more stipulations of disclosure and puts the onus on the employer so that someone can get that obtain those records and potentially contest that in terms of being denied an opportunity or having offer send it for them. 

Kevin Karami:

That's really interesting and I kinda, based on something you said earlier, I just had to mine or false. One of them was going back to what you said earlier about depending on whether or not you have a record, the impact that has on employment and re-entry. But then also, I was wondering, are there any racial or gender or any other kinds of discrimination happening when it comes to employment. That can maybe stack on top of having record. And if so, how much of an impact does it have? Or maybe the impact is not huge. 

Sharon Oselin:

It does have a big impact. There has been studies that try to tease out the effect of race versus having a criminal record of some sorts. Studies repeatedly find that people are discriminated based on race and ethnicity. So the most hard hit are often African-Americans in terms of being targeted, discriminated against. And then the record also adds on to that in compounds that disadvantage or discrimination that can occur for individuals. So there's been really interesting audits studies by DBA pager and others. And some of those are 15 years old or so that really show that like, it's like a double whammy of sorts for individuals when they have this. And even inside, is it trying to tease out the differences? White individuals, if I remember in the study correctly, white individuals who have a record get callbacks more and this isn't the initial call backstage than African Americans who don't have records, right? So this really shows that it's not just about having a record, but it also intersects with race, ethnicity. And of course, class is a big component of that as well, in terms of what types of jobs you're playing board and so forth. 

Kevin Karami:

Yeah, definitely. I think that's also really important question because you said it can just goes to show that, you know, how do you record obviously enrolled, but then there's so many other factors that can play that can make the situation even worse. And I think it's, it's really surprising that those are the records that are white have a better chance of getting callback versus Africa Americans with no Right exactly how big the impact of race is

Sharon Oselin:

Exactly. And sometimes, It's hard to disentangle, right? And so that's why it's great to have studies and we need more studies that try to decouple to some extent what's going on here and get inside of the thinking in assessments of the hiring decision makers, which is what we were trying to do with this, with our surveys right up like, how do you make these decisions, right? And would you consider this Canada versus this kinda, how would you evaluate them? So we're trying to tease out some of that, but it's so much larger project and endeavor. 

Kevin Karami

Yeah, definitely. And any other follow-up I had was more so on. This might be a little obvious, but it must be really challenging to try to, when you're talking with an employer, trying to see if you were to ask them what their thoughts are on something with California Fair Chance Act, they would probably give you the societally accepted answer. So what's the challenge when it comes to trying to convince people, Hey, this is a really important policy that I speak, not only password enforced, because I think oftentimes a counter-argument they might give as well. I reserve the right to hire who I want or went off on. How challenging is that conversation? 

Sharon Oselin:

Yeah, I mean, our study wasn't really getting at changing people's mind. We're trying to assess how people think about this, how hiring decision-makers think about this. But I do think that is a problem with surveys of social desirability bias. We know that people can try to give the PC or socially correct answers. But surprisingly, we did some small amount of follow-up interviews. And surprisingly we also people were somewhat open with their thinking and said things. I was surprised to hear them say, we do have some work, not just a survey, but we also have a smaller number and I believe it's like 20 something interviews, follow up interviews with individuals asking them more about like, what is your thought process? How do you do these assessments? How much are you aware of the fierce, excuse me, Fair Chance Act and these kinds of questions? And sometimes  they they incorrectly understood what it was. They were like operating off of faulty information. That translates to the types of things are doing it, these hiring processes. And that's a problem, right? If they're not even aware exactly of what the Fair Chance Act entails

Kevin Karami:

Yeah. I guess that relates to a bigger problem that actually educating getting the word out exactly. It sounds like it sounds like an obvious issue, but it's a really big issue that people don't know it exists or they misunderstand what it implies, then that can totally change their actions when it comes to employment

Kevin Karami:

And to kind of finish the episode. I thought we could maybe take a step back and look at the topic from a broader lens on a bigger issue. I, obviously this topic is very contentious and can oftentimes be very political in nature. So on a larger scale, what are your thoughts on the kinds of societal trends? And you can maybe identify the ones that you think are relevant. And maybe ideologies that play a role in terms of whether or not people support this kind of reform and support the idea of just because you have a record and it doesn't mean that you shouldn't be completely shut off from society. And I think maybe we can touch on the idea that if you don't get employment and housing, then you're more likely to actually potentially go back. So what are your thoughts on larger ideologies and societal trends that exist and feel people that either support these policies or maybe our vehemently against them? 

Sharon Oselin:

Yeah, that's a good question. I think that there's a growing awareness and recognition that there are these structural inequalities that exist, right? And part of that awareness and acceptance is less change policies. Let's do something differently here. Let's modify the ways that try to eradicate this discrimination or harms as perpetrated against individuals. So there's increasingly more of a like a social justice orientation, I would say in the state of California, much more so than other places, of course. I think we're seeing that come to fruition in terms of these various policies that have been passed. And these pertain to either decreased duration or protections for justice impacted individuals. So that's one, I think there is a good amount of public support for social justice, in part fueled by some of the events that happened in 2020 with George Floyd and others. The flip side, however, some individuals and I hear this from some practitioners are frustrated. Not necessarily because they disagree with some of the policies, but what they're frustrated about from what I've heard is that they are frustrated. There's a lack of resources earmarked to help people transition. It's like some of the policies are. If you release more individuals, how do you help them transition successfully into society? What resources are you funneling towards that? What trainings are you provided to them? What educational opportunities are given to them? What housing options or do they have available to them? So these are creating tensions for people of maybe the policies are well-meaning, but when people actually are released, are they being taken care off? Are they being provided for in various ways to increase their odds of success? And I think that's where some of the frustration I think and pushed back against some of these policies are is that we just haven't thought through the entire process are provided enough support for individuals who actually be successful all the way through and to have successful reintegration. So I think that's some of the tension. And of course some of the tension are just some people are just wanna be really tough on crime and think that people don't really change, right? There's always people that believe that. But overall, I think more and more people are changing kind of perspective about it, at least in California, like I said, 

Kevin Karami:

I think it's good that we're slowly heading in the right direction. I know it’s a really, like you mentioned earlier, really difficult topic. And like you said at the end, some people are just gonna be against it regardless of the arguments you present, regardless of any evidence you present. And that's just a part of the challenge of it. And unfortunately, policy policymaking can be difficult because of that, right. But I think it's I think it's really good that there are at least ways to act and to move in the right direction. With that being said, Professor Oselin, thank you so much for taking the time to join us to talk about here, to talk about an issue we've actually never talked about. So I'm really excited to share with our audience. So thank you so much. 

Sharon Oselin:

Thank you for inviting me.