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Effects of Having a Criminal Record on Career Advancement

A criminal record, otherwise known as a police record contains information about an individual’s criminal history. The information contained in such records varies from country to country. In the United States of America, a criminal record contains information about the arrests, charges, and the disposition of the given charges (Legalline). Usually, criminal records are compiled and updated at all levels, mostly by agencies in charge of law enforcement (Legalline). The core purpose of these records is to provide a comprehensive history of an individual’s criminal history. They are usually used by employers, immigration and migration agencies and adoption agencies to assess an individual’s eligibility (Legalline). They may also come in handy in identifying suspects (Legalline). Since employers often look at a candidate’s criminal record before employing them, having a criminal record is likely to affect someone’s career negatively.

Various scholars have looked at the effects of having a criminal record on employment and career advancement, as well as its relationship with socioeconomic and racial inequalities. A study carried out in May 2017 by Amanda Agan and Sonja B. Starr shows that even those crimes and felonies considered minor have a fairly huge impact on access to employment as well as advancement. The pair carried out a study among 15,000 online job applicants to companies located in New Jersey and New York (Agan and Starr 3). Their goal was to establish the rates of call-backs and how these callbacks were affected by criminal records. The results from the experiment suggested that candidates with criminal records were segregated and did not get many callbacks (Agan and Starr 5). The two also analyzed the effects of race and residence in employment. According to their findings, African Americans with a criminal record got fewer callback rates than their Caucasian counterparts (Agan and Starr 7). The study also confirms that offenders living in primarily white neighborhoods got more callbacks than those from black neighborhoods (Agan and Starr 8). The study, therefore, confirms that employment, which is the first step to developing a career is grossly affected by an individual’s criminal record, regardless of the magnitude of the offense.

Although it is possible for candidates with criminal records to be employed by firms in America, there is the issue of there being very few opportunities for such people to advance their careers through promotions and more responsibilities. A report by the Society for Human Resource Management, also known as SHRM in 2017 indicates that the overall number of people with criminal records is on the rise (SHRM 1). This means that it is almost impossible for employers to avoid employing such people. In addition to the scrutiny people with criminal records face while looking for employment, they also tend to have a harder time getting promotion opportunities than their counterparts without criminal records. Some employers fail to recognize that people with criminal records are a source of untapped talent and ignore their efforts at their workplaces (SHRM 3). Generally, managers will only hire employees with criminal records only if they have the best credentials compared to their counterparts without a record. More than 14% of HR managers admitted to not being willing to hire people with a record or promoting them (SHRM 4). This, therefore, indicates that having a criminal record makes it harder for an employee to be promoted or to even get a job in the first place.

Employees with criminal records have a harder time interacting with their fellow employees, a factor that may make it harder for them to feel comfortable coming up with new ideas or working as a team with the rest of the employees. The report by SHRM shows that although over 50% of employees are willing to work with people with criminal records, a fair percentage of them are unwilling to work with them (SHRM 4). According to the report, more non-managers at a workplace are unwilling to work with people with criminal records. This phenomenon, according to the report has more to do with the attitude of the managers and employees than the quality of work of the offenders (SHRM 4). Advancement of a career relies on team work with both the colleagues and the managers of a given firm. If people with criminal records are employed in firms where the managers and other employees have a negative attitude towards them, they may find it hard to interact with them and may not feel free to be creative and innovative. This might lead to stagnation or even demotion. It is apparent, therefore, that having a criminal record may limit an individual’s ability to be part of a team, thus stagnation careerwise.

Having a criminal record in the USA and any other country for that matter is likely to affect an individual’s career negatively, regardless of the type of offense committed. Researchers have looked into the rate of employment of people with criminal records and have discovered that they are less likely to be employed than their counterparts without records. Apart from that, it was evident that in most cases people of color, particularly African American men found it harder to get employment. It was also evident that people with records are less likely to be promoted or to have a normal work relationship with their fellow employees.

Works Cited

Agan, Amanda, and Sonja B. Starr. "The Effect of Criminal Records on Access to Employment" May-June 2017, repository.law.umich.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2892&context=articles.

Legalline. "What is a Criminal Record?" Legal Line, 2010, www.legalline.ca/legal-answers/what-is-a-criminal-record-2/.

SHRM. "WORKERS WITH CRIMINAL RECORDS A Survey by the Society for Human Resource Management and the Charles Koch Institute". 2017. www.shrm.org/hr-today/trends-and-forecasting/research-and-surveys/Documents/SHRM-CKI%20Workers%20with%20Criminal%20Records%20Issue%20Brief%202018-05-17.pdf. Accessed  2017.