By Sarah Lageson and Robert Apel

Employment discrimination from a criminal record is a salient social fact, evidenced by a robust body of experimental research. In Part 1 of this study, we analyze prior criminal record hiring experiments—comprising in-person audits, online audits, and opt-in surveys—to describe patterns over time in employer receptivity to applicants of different races with criminal records. In Part 2, we use a novel experimental survey of 1080 employers to measure how differences in the signaling of a criminal record impact the criminal record–employment relationship. Our results reveal a substantial hiring penalty for an official criminal record (conveyed by a background check report), with a smaller but still significant penalty for an unofficial criminal record (an Internet search engine “hit”). The experiment also shows that the official criminal record penalty is significantly larger for White applicants than for Black applicants. Although the latter finding was counter to expectations informed by prior studies, it is less surprising considering our Part 1 findings, which reveal a closing racial gap in the criminal record penalty during the last 20 years. We discuss how broader legal, social, and technological changes, as well as changes in methodologies, impact our understanding today of criminal records, race, and employment.

Criminology, Volume 63, Issue 2 May 2025 Pages 382-410

By Jacob Kaplan · Aaron Chalfn

Observational evidence suggests that better ambient lighting leads people to feel safer when spending time outdoors in their community. We subject this finding to greater scrutiny and elaborate on the extent to which improvements in street lighting affect routine activities during nighttime hours. We report evidence from a survey experiment that examines individual's' perceptions of safety under two different intensities of nighttime ambient lighting. Brighter street lighting leads individuals to feel safer and over half of survey respondents are willing to pay an additional $400 per year in taxes in order to finance a hypothetical program which would replace dim yellow street lights with brighter LED lights. However, poor lighting does not change people’s willingness to spend time outdoors or to engage in behaviors which mitigate risk. Results suggest that street lighting is a means through which policymakers can both control crime and improve community well-being.

Security Journal (2022) 35:694–724