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86 Fed. Probation 11 (2022)
How Pretrial Incarceration Diminishes Individuals' Employment Prospects

handle is hein.journals/fedpro86 and id is 107 raw text is: December 2022 11 Sandra Susan Smith Harvard University DECADES OF RESEARCH have shown that penal system contact worsens individu- als' employment prospects. With arrest, conviction, and incarceration, people are significantly less likely to find work, and when they are employed, they work fewer weeks per year, on average, and earn signifi- cantly lower wages (Freeman, 1991; Grogger, 1992; Waldfogel, 1994; Nagin & Waldfogel, 1995; Western, 2006). In keeping with this, three recent reports causally link pretrial detention to diminished employment pros- pects. In a 2018 publication, economists Will Dobbie, Jacob Goldin, and Crystal Yang show that pretrial release increased formal sector employment by roughly 25 percent compared to equivalent, marginal defendants who were detained instead. Importantly, the employ- ment effects of detention were strongest for first-time offenders. Jung Kim and Yumi Koh (2022) report that while pretrial release had a negligible effect on employment among Whites, among Blacks of prime working age and across all education categories, pretrial release increased labor force participation, full-time job status, and the number of hours worked. More recently, researchers at the New York City Criminal Justice Agency report not only that justice-involvement was associ- ated with employment, financial, and housing instability, but also that pretrial detention specifically predicted poor outcomes in each of these areas (Bergin et al., 2022). What accounts for pretrial incarceration's negative effect on individuals' employment? While neither study offers an unequivocal account of the mechanisms linking pretrial incarceration to diminished employment out- comes, Dobbie, Goldin, and Yang (2018) point to the role that criminal conviction plays: Because pretrial detention increases the likelihood that individuals are convicted, it also diminishes the likelihood of finding work, since employers are disinclined to hire job seekers with criminal records. Criminal conviction, however, is arguably just one mechanism linking detention with dimin- ished employment prospects. To further explore how pretrial incarcera- tion might erode employment prospects, this study draws from in-depth, semi-structured interviews with 191 ethnoracially diverse indi- viduals in the San Francisco Bay Area who were cited or arrested for low-level misde- meanor offenses between 2013 and 2018. The study focused on study participants' experiences pre-, during, and post-detention. Analysis suggests that both detention-related job losses and vehicle seizures contribute to destabilizing employment post detention, in the short and long term. It also suggests that such losses shape individuals' perceived barri- ers to employment, no matter their conviction status. Indeed, a higher percentage of people who lost their jobs and/or vehicles perceived the criminal record, employer discrimination, and lack of transportation as major barriers to employment some three years after the detention experience. Thus, this exploration suggests two additional pathways through which pretrial incarceration erodes employ- ment prospects: by initiating job and vehicle losses that then further destabilize employ- ment, and then by shaping perceptions about the extent and nature of barriers to employ- ment they face, increasing both the number of barriers they imagine and their sense of how important these barriers are to finding and keeping jobs. Importantly, previous research finds that such perceptions negatively affect whether people search for work and how they do so (Apel & Sweeten, 2010; Sugie, 2018; Smith & Broege, 2019). Why Do Employment Prospects Erode with Pretrial Incarceration? Theories abound about why incarceration erodes employment prospects. Certainly, some job seekers would struggle with employment even if they had never had contact with the penal system. Before penal contact, justice- involved people, who are disproportionately poor, less educated, and of color, generally struggle with higher rates of unemployment, and when employed garner lower hourly wages, work relatively few weeks per year, and have annual earnings that place them below the poverty line (Grogger, 1995; Useem & Piehl, 2008). After penal contact, however, their employment prospects dim further still (Western, 2006; Visher & Kachnowski, 2007). The dominant explanation for eroded employment prospects attributes diminished job prospects to institutional exclusion, the role that legal and social stigmas play in erect- ing institutional barriers to legitimate work in the formal economy. From this perspec- tive, the system-involved people experience higher rates of unemployment, despite their best efforts to find work, because of state and December 2022 11

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