Comprehensive Report: Business, Society, and Ban the Box Movement

This report provides an in-depth analysis of the 'Ban the Box' movement, a campaign focused on removing the criminal history question from job applications to give individuals with criminal records a fair chance at employment. The report examines the movement's impact on the business environment and society, highlighting the challenges and opportunities it presents. It explores issues such as the potential for hiring unskilled labor, the impact on opportunities for skilled candidates, and the ethical considerations involved. The report also discusses potential solutions, including setting recruitment criteria, providing training programs, and ensuring fair distribution of opportunities. Additionally, the report touches upon the economic implications and potential for discrimination within the movement, particularly between white and black applicants. Overall, the report concludes that while the movement has ethical underpinnings, its implementation requires careful consideration and modification of policies to ensure fairness and effectiveness.

Study
and
Research Skills

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................1
MAIN BODY 1 - Impact on the environment of business and the society ....................................1
MAIN BODY 2 - The employees which are hired as per this movement are unskilled labours.....3
MAIN BODY 3 - The opportunities for the skilled and deserving candidates is decreasing..........4
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................5
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................6

INTRODUCTION
An international campaign which refers to the check box on applications of employment
which confirms that the applicants have criminal record or not is known as Ban the box. It is also
known as fair chance policies (Agan and Starr, 2016). In 1990, this campaign was started at
Hawaii. This movement becomes more popular in different states of United States during the
recession period. The focal point of the campaign is to improve the life of the people who have
some criminal record or involved in any court case. They support the person who wants to begin
their new life. There are very strict laws and regulations in the United States, due to which many
of the citizens have criminal records. Therefore, to increase the employees or labours in their
country as well as to reduce the problem of unemployment, this campaign was started in United
states (Atkinson and Lockwood, 2014).
This report consists of the problems occurs due to the implementation of Ban the box
policies. Further, the solutions are identified for each and every problem. Moreover, it involves
the implementation of the best alternative.
MAIN BODY 1 - Impact on the environment of business and the society
Ban the box prohibits public as well as private employers to inquire about the criminal
background or history of the candidate until the process of recruitment. This type of policy is
adopted in various cities and states of United States (Ban, Shi and Bradford, 2013). The box on
many applications of government federal was banned by the former president of US, Barack
Obama. The main motivation behind the Ban the box policy is that it provides the fair chances to
the candidate in an interview irrespective of their criminal records. Many of the peoples of
United states have better skills and knowledge than common people, therefore to motivate such
types of citizens the government decided to ban the box of criminal records. An employee should
be judge from their knowledge and skills not by their criminal records, therefore the government
is changing the laws to give fair chances to each and every citizen of their country (D’Alessio,
Stolzenberg and Flexon, 2015).
There are 70 million of adults in the United states who are arrests, despite of their
qualification and skills many of them are moved from their jobs. The box on the application form
act as a barrier as it discourages many of the candidates from applying. According to a research,
the probability of call back for job reduces by 50% if a candidate have any kind of criminal
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record (Garcia, 2012). This policy was adopted by many of the jurisdictions in early 2000s,
therefore they have very rich experience and knowledge about it. Many of the groups of political
spectrum and policymakers supports the fair chance policies. At present, over 125 cities and 25
states around the united states adopts fair chance policies, which is also known as ban the box.
Local jurisdiction and nine states applies these policies to government contractor as well as
private employers. Many of the bigger business entities such as Wallmart, Koch industries,
Home depot, Facebook, Target and Starbucks eliminates the question about criminal record of
the applying candidate (Giannotti, Al-Sahab and Tamim, 2011). This step taken by such bigger
companies also motivates the smaller organizations to eliminates the question of criminal record
from the job application form.
Ban the box is very popular campaign and also it goes viral across the country. As this
movement supports the persons who have any kind of criminal record whether it is big or small.
It impacts the environment of business and the society. Criminals are more dangerous than the
common people (Ha, Park and Ban, 2011). According to Houghton and Catherine (2013), there
is some environment of fear and common peoples are afraid of them (Houghton, Catherine,
et.al., 2013). Everyone has different mindset to judge a criminal, some people takes in positive
manner while other takes in negative manner (Nadich, 2014). If the criminals will involve in any
organization, then definitely it will affect the whole environment of the workplace. If this
problem is not solved than effectiveness and efficiency of all the business entities will decrease
which indirectly effects the productivity of the company. To overcome this problem, various
solutions are obtained which are discussed below.
Since ban the box supports the persons who have some criminal records which leads to
the uncomfortable working place as well as misconduct at the working place (Huiyong, Gang
and Yuanqing, 2013). If the environment of the workplace is not healthy than the efficiency and
productivity of the company also decreases. However, it can be argued that presence of
employees who have criminal record does not provide any harm to the environment of the
workplace. As they are also normal human beings and they also have right to go at any place and
work freely.
From this it can be analysed that to solve this problem, one of the solution is that the
companies of private sector and government organization should set certain criteria to recruit the
candidates which have criminal background. They can set different levels for activities of
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criminal i.e. the person who have bigger criminal record should be preferred for the lower level
job and the person with smaller criminal record should be preferred for comparatively upper
level of job and if a person is highly involved in very big crime then companies should not
provide them any kind of job. By applying this types of rules and regulations the companies will
easily different between criminal's category and then provide them job accordingly (Kyaw,
Tipping and Bobik, 2011). This process filters the candidates who have criminal background.
Implementation of this solution will act as a remedy against the problems or drawbacks of Ban
the box movement.
MAIN BODY 2 - The employees which are hired as per this movement are
unskilled labours
There are many drawbacks with the campaign, one of the major problem which is faced
during the Ban the box movement is that the employees which are hired as per this movement
are unskilled labours (Nadich, 2014). According to the Airasian (2011) These candidates have
fewer skills than the common people. As they belong to the criminal backgrounds, so they never
learned type of skills (Gay, Mills and Airasian, 2011). Also, they do not have any work
experience as they used to do crimes earlier. But in accordance to the law, It is compulsory for
the private sector industries as well as for government organizations to hire this types of
candidates.
In order to solution of this problem the business entities should provide proper training to
the employees. Proper scheduled training programs should be organized at the workplace which
improve the skills of these types of labours and also provides better knowledge and information
about their work (Peris, Tutino and Ban, 2010). These training programs eliminates all the
demerits of the which are related to unskilled labours. With the improvement in the skills of the
labours, the overall productivity, efficiency and effectiveness of the business entity increases.
Not all the persons who have criminal record are bad in skills, some criminals may have better
skills than other. The organizations should recruit the skilled labours which is more beneficial for
them.
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MAIN BODY 3 - The opportunities for the skilled and deserving candidates is
decreasing
The another major problem with this campaign is that the opportunities for the skilled and
deserving candidates is decreasing (Ubi, Sakamoto and Moriguchi, 2010). When the companies
hires the employees who have lesser skills than the existing employee, than it will affect them
very much. According to the Cottrell (2013), the existing employees of the company works
really hard to improve their skills and if more opportunities is provided to the newly recruited
employees with criminal background then it will be unfair (Cottrell, 2013). But it can be argued,
in accordance with Samaras (2010), the employees from criminal backgrounds also work hard
and enhances their skills. Therefore, they also deserve the various opportunities (Samaras, 2010).
From this it can be analysed that to solve this problem, the distribution of work and
opportunities should be equal among all the employees whether they are newly recruited or
existing one, to implement this the organizations should develop better processes (Vuolo,
Lageson and Uggen, 2017). By implementing this type of processes, existing employees will also
get benefit from new opportunities. This creates a fair and healthy competition between newly
recruited candidates and the existing employees. As both types of workers are doing same kind
of work, therefore no discrimination should be there. It also allows development of both the
categories of employees.
Ban the box is very effective concept which provides second chance to the people to
become a productive employee, who had make mistakes in their past. By providing the
employment to the unemployed criminals will reduce the crime as well as unemployment (Yanai,
Ban and Taniguchi, 2012). It also helps in improving the overall economy of the united states.
This movement has various types of advantages such as it opens the job market more, it also
reduces the problem of unemployment in the country, it gives second chance to improve, it
creates healthy competition, etc. Along with these advantages, there are also many dis
advantages of this campaign like employees who have criminal record are not liable, they are not
so responsible, many of them are dishonest, environment of the workplace become unhealthy,
etc.
According to the research, the fair chance policy or ban the box policies affects the
employment probability for youngsters. For low skilled black young men, the probability of
employment is reduced by 5.1 per cent. And the chances of getting job for low skilled Hispanic
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men is reduced by 2.9 per cent. This reduction is occurred due to the involvement of more
citizens who are from criminal background in competition (Yoon, Ban and Kim, 2011). Before
the implementation of policies of Ban the box, black men gets slightly less call backs for job. But
after its implementation the black men gets six times lesser call backs for jobs as compared to the
white men. This rules help the white ex- offenders very much because many of the employer of
business entities assumes that white men have less criminal record than black men.
CONCLUSION
In this report we conclude that the motive behind initializing the Ban the box movement
is ethical and logical. The campaign was implemented to improve the life of the people who have
some criminal record. Along with the benefits, there are many drawbacks of these policies. Due
to recruitment of criminals, the environment of the workplace becomes unhealthy. In order to its
solution the company should set certain criteria to recruit the candidates which have criminal
background. Also, to overcome the problem of the unskilled labours the organizations should
provide various training programs. This campaign contributes in the economic growth of the
country but it also discriminates between the recruitment process of white men and black men.
The government of United States should improve or modify their laws and regulations related to
the Ban the box policies. They must restrict the discrimination between white and black people
during the process of hiring. Also, they should try to implement these policies on each and every
business entity whether it is public or private.
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REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Agan, A. Y. and Starr, S. B., 2016. Ban the box, criminal records, and statistical discrimination:
A field experiment.
Atkinson, D. and Lockwood, K., 2014. The Benefits of Ban the Box: A Case Study of Durham,
NC. The Southern Coalition for Social Justice.
Ban, H., Shi, G. and Bradford, M. A., 2013. Experimental investigation of the overall buckling
behaviour of 960MPa high strength steel columns. Journal of Constructional Steel
Research. 88. pp.256-266.
D’Alessio, S. J., Stolzenberg, L. and Flexon, J. L., 2015. The effect of Hawaii’s Ban the Box
Law on repeat offending. American Journal of Criminal Justice. 40(2). pp.336-352.
Garcia, A., 2012. The Kobayashi Maru of Ex-Offender Employment: Rewriting the Rules and
Thinking Outside Current Ban the Box Legislation. Temp. L. Rev.. 85. pp.921.
Giannotti, M., Al-Sahab, B. and Tamim, H., 2011. Epidemiology of acute soccer injuries in
Canadian children and youth. Pediatric emergency care. 27(2). pp.81-85.
Ha, S. J., Park, C. E. and Ban, C. H., 2011. Development of the SPACE code for nuclear power
plants. Nuclear Engineering and Technology. 43(1). pp.45-62.
Huiyong, B. A. N., Gang, S. H. I. and Yuanqing, W. A. N. G., 2013. Investigation on residual
stress in Q460 high strength steel welded box sections. Journal of Building
Structures. 34(1). pp.14-21.
Kyaw, T., Tipping, P. and Bobik, A., 2011. Current understanding of the role of B cell subsets
and intimal and adventitial B cells in atherosclerosis. Current opinion in lipidology. 22(5).
pp.373-379.
Nadich, A. F., 2014. Ban the Box: An Employer's Medicine Masked as a Headache. Roger
Williams UL Rev.. 19. pp.767.
Peris, A., Tutino, L. and Ban, K., 2010. The use of point-of-care bedside lung ultrasound
significantly reduces the number of radiographs and computed tomography scans in
critically ill patients. Anesthesia & Analgesia. 111(3). pp.687-692.
Ubi, B. E., Sakamoto, D. and Moriguchi, T., 2010. Molecular cloning of dormancy-associated
MADS-box gene homologs and their characterization during seasonal endodormancy
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transitional phases of Japanese pear. Journal of the American Society for Horticultural
Science. 135(2). pp.174-182.
Vuolo, M., Lageson, S. and Uggen, C., 2017. Criminal Record Questions in the Era of “Ban the
Box”. Criminology & Public Policy. 16(1). pp.139-165.
Yanai, H., Ban, T. and Taniguchi, T., 2012. High-mobility group box family of proteins: ligand
and sensor for innate immunity. Trends in immunology. 33(12). pp.633-640.
Yoon, Y., Ban, K. D. and Kim, J., 2011, October. Blob extraction based character segmentation
method for automatic license plate recognition system. In Systems, Man, and Cybernetics
(SMC), 2011 IEEE International Conference on (pp. 2192-2196). IEEE.
Houghton, Catherine and et.al., "Rigour in qualitative case-study research." Nurse
researcher 20.4 (2013): 12-17.
Gay, L. R., Mills, G. E. and Airasian, P. W., 2011. Educational research: Competencies for
analysis and applications. Pearson Higher Ed.
Solomon, M. R., 2014. Consumer behavior: Buying, having, and being (Vol. 10). Engelwood
Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.
Cottrell, S., 2013. The study skills handbook. Palgrave Macmillan.
Samaras, A. P., 2010. Self-study teacher research: Improving your practice through
collaborative inquiry. Sage Publications.
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