By Zoe B. Cullen, Will S. Dobbie, and Mitchell Hoffman

State and local policies increasingly restrict employers’ access to criminal records, but without addressing the underlying reasons that employers may conduct criminal background checks. Employers may thus still want to ask about a job applicant’s criminal record later in the hiring process or make inaccurate judgments based on an applicant’s demographic characteristics. In this paper, we use a field experiment conducted in partnership with a nationwide staffing platform to test policies that more directly address the reasons that employers may conduct criminal background checks. The experiment asked hiring managers at nearly a thousand U.S. businesses to make incentive-compatible decisions under different randomized conditions. We find that 39% of businesses in our sample are willing to work with individuals with a criminal record at baseline, which rises to over 50% when businesses are offered crime and safety insurance, a single performance review, or a limited background check covering just the past year. Wage subsidies can achieve similar increases but at substantially higher cost. Based on our findings, the staffing platform relaxed the criminal background check requirement and offered crime and safety insurance to interested businesses.

Cambridge, MA: National Bureau of Economic Research, 2022. 42p.

By Sophus A. Reinert

The Milanese Marquis Cesare Beccaria (1738-1794) dedicated his life first to theorizing a more just and equal society grounded in individual rights, anchored in secular political economy rather than in religious dogma, then to realizing this bold vision through decades of administrative and regulatory work for the Milanese state. His project was not merely to reform the criminal system of the Old Regime but to challenge the very inequalities—legal, economic, educational, and so on—which drove crime to begin with.2 During his lifetime, however, his fame as a “friend of humanity” derived mostly from his impassioned pleas against torture and capital punishment, though on the basis of his temperament and his ideas it would also be easy to count him as part of what, for the later eighteenth century, the late Yves Bénot dubbed the “internationale abolitionniste.”3 This is, in large parts, also how he is remembered, but not only. It is of course a truism that ideas can have ironic, even sarcastic afterlives, but there is nonetheless something slightly perverse about Beccaria’s treatment in parts of American historiography.4 I have previously highlighted how his paternity has been claimed for both libertarian atheism and Catholic social democracy, but his name now appears ever more frequently in contemporary debates over “gun rights,” the “carceral state” and the rise of “racial capitalism.”5 We often hear of the “centrality of penal slavery” in Beccaria’s thought, for example, to the point where he repeatedly has been given the rather unenviable title of “father of prison slavery” and “father of penal servitude.”6 Some of these commentators are generous enough to admit that Beccaria can “be credited with voicing some humanitarian concerns,”

Boston, MA: Harvard Business School, 2021. 49p.

By Graeme R. Newman.

This vintage text, first published in 1978, on the causes, consequences and distribution of violence is as relevant today as it was over 4 decades ago.. Though limited to research of the 1970s, the explanations, exposition and reviews of data and theories of violence are staggeringly similar to the research of the 21st century. The organization of the material is unequaled, and will help any student of violence, or anyone who seeks answers and understanding, with its well organized exposition and clear, down-to-earth style. The new preface by the author identifies what he would add if he were doing a new edition, and why in the end he chose not to write one.

NY. Harrow and Heston Classic Reprint. 2021.

By Karl Steel.

How to Make a Human: Animals and Violence in the Middle Ages tracks human attempts to cordon humans off from other life through a wide range of medieval texts and practices, including encyclopedias, dietary guides, resurrection doctrine, cannibal narrative, butchery law, boar-hunting, and teratology. Karl Steel argues that the human subjugation of animals played an essential role in the medieval concept of the human. In their works and habits, humans tried to distinguish themselves from other animals by claiming that humans alone among worldly creatures possess language, reason, culture, and, above all, an immortal soul and resurrectable body. Humans convinced themselves of this difference by observing that animals routinely suffer degradation at the hands of humans. Since the categories of human and animal were both a retroactive and relative effect of domination, no human could forgo his human privileges without abandoning himself.Medieval arguments for both human particularity and the unique sanctity of human life have persisted into the modern age despite the insights of Darwin. How to Make a Human joins with other works in critical animal theory to unsettle human pretensions in the hopes of training humans to cease to project, and to defend, their human selves against other animals.

Columbus, OH: Ohio State University Press, 2011. 292p.

By Raimo Lahti.

This collection of essays on criminal law, criminology and criminal policy includes a selection of my articles from the year of 1972 to the year of 2020, i.e., from a period of 49 years. The writings – in all 32 – chosen for the compilation are written in English and 30 of them have been published earlier. The main aim with this anthology is to crucially widen the access of my writings for comparative purposes. The articles are divided into seven chapters. Chapters I–VI cover a large spectrum of criminal sciences, and they are – in particular, in Chapters IV–VI – written rather from a Nordic (Scandinavian) than from a narrower Finnish perspective. The title of the anthology expresses its main message: towards an efficient, just and humane criminal justice. Chapter VII includes five articles related to bio-ethics and (criminal) law. The reason for that chapter’s attachment is to present some of my contributions to the new discipline entitled ‘Medical law and biolaw’.

The intensified internationalization and Europeanization of criminal law and justice have changed the role of comparative law and criminal sciences in general. There is much more need for comparison of legal orders due to the emergence of European criminal law and international criminal law and due to the increased interaction between European and global legal regulations and the national legal orders. We also need more evidence-based criminological research to be utilized in criminal-policy planning and as a foundation for rational policy decisions.

Helsinki: Suomalainen lakimiesyhdistys, 2021. 554p.

By Coleman Phillipson.

THE following three essays are not intended to be considered as separate, independent studies; they are meant to be taken together as supplementing each other, and as constituting one whole. With this intention in view, the author has been able to avoid a good deal of overlapping and repetition, which would otherwise have been inevitable. Though three men and their works are here discussed, we are concerned with but one epoch, one movement, one phase in legal evolution, which represents in many respects a turning-point in European history, and is of the utmost importance in the development of our modern civilisation. Beccaria, Bentham and Romilly are among the greatest law reformers of modern times. In their assault on the folly, injustice and cruelty of the then existing criminal jurisprudence, in their trenchant criticism of outworn codes, obscurantist traditions, blind superstitions, dogmatic technicalities, oppressive fictions, and useless relics of the past, in their proposal of rational substitutes, in their pointing the way to the light, they were intimately united. Their resemblances, like their differences, are as striking in their work as they are in their personal characteristics. In the case of Beccaria—a diffident Italian youth, shrinking from the struggles _ of men, whose small work was almost forcibly extracted from . him by his friends, and whose guarded oracular utterances soon arrested the attention of the world—we shall see vital conceptions and principles of penology in the process of germination and crystallisation; we shall see them in their triumphant conflict with the prevailing régime of sanguinary laws and barbarous methods of procedure. In the case of Bentham—that myriad-minded man, the dauntless explorer of institutions, the arch-legislator ever ready, in his jealously guarded “‘hermitage,”’ to make laws for all the nations of the earth—we shall see a prodigious multitude of ideas, schemes and systems, lavishly given to the world from a rich mine that could, surely, never be exhausted; we shall see this prolific progenitor scattering them broadcast, infusing new life into many barren places…

London: J.M. Dent, 1923. 344p.

By Louis Proal.

A Legal and Literary Study. Translated by Alfred Richard Allinson. From the preface: “…How comes it that affection may turn to hate, and lovers become the bitterest of foes — that the transition is so easy from love to loathing, from the transports of the most exalted tenderness to frenzies of the most savage anger? How is it foun so fond a feeling may grow so cruel and lead to commission of so many barbarous murders…?”

Paris. Carrington (1901) 707 pages.

By Moritz Benedikt and Edward P. Fowler.

Anatomical studies upon brains of criminals: a contribution to anthropology, medicine, jurisprudence, and psychology. “An inability to restrain themselves the repetition of crime, notwithstanding …the superior power of he lazy society, and a lack of sentiment of right and wrong…”

Harrow and Heston Classic Reprint. 1878. 204 pages.

By H. B. Irving.

“Do not let us, in all the pomp and circumstance of stately history, blind ourselves to the fact that the crimes of Frederick, or Napoleon, or their successors, are in essence no different from those of Sheppard or Peace. We must not imagine that the bad man who happens to offend against those particular laws which constitute the criminal code belongs to a peculiar or atavistic type, that he is a man set apart from the rest of his fellow-men by mental or physical peculiarities.”

Harrow and Heston Classic Reprint. (1918) 297 pages.

By the President’s Commission of Law Enforcement and Administration of Justice.

“This report is about crime in America — about those who commit it, about those who are its victims, and about what can be done to reduce it….The existence of crime, the talk about crime, the reports of crime, and the fear of crime have eroded the basic quality of life of many Americans.” From the Summary.

Harrow and Heston Classic reprint. (1967) 342 pages.

By William A. Bonger.

Here is the classic socialist theory of criminality, that the causes of crime are social, not biological. And crimes, maybe all crimes, are always committed against the powerful.

Harrow and Heston Classic Reprint. Boston. Little Brown. 1916.

By Enrico Ferri.

The positive school of criminology was b born of the three lectures Ferri gave at the University of Naples in 1901. In these essays he makes the case for the importance, possibly supremacy, of social and economics causes of crime, in contrast to the then dominant theories of biological determinism, the idea of the “born criminal.” In much of his professional life he was driven by one cause that strikes a bell today in the 21st century: the cause of social justice.

Harrow and Heston Classic Reprint. 1902.

By Enrico Ferri.

In this great Italian classic in criminology, its famed author Enrico Ferri describes it as “a work of propaganda and an elementary guide for anyone who intends to dedicate himself to the scientific study of offenders and of the means of prevention and social defense against them.” Published in 1892 and in English in 1896. The book emphasizes the link between crime causation and social justice, setting him apart from his criminal anthropologist forebears.

Harrow and Heston Classic Reprint. 1896.

By C. Ainsworth Mitchell.

Conflict between the Law-maker and the Law-breaker — Illustrations of Deductive Reasoning in Criminal Cases — Scientific Evidence — Scientific Assistance for the Accused — Instances of Advantages of Conflict of Scientific Evidence —Scientific Partisanship.

Boston Little Brown (1911) 282p.

By John Charles Bucknill.

In Relation to Criminal Acts. “Your Lordship, having held successively the Gkeat Seal in England and in Ireland, has been the legal guardian of all insane persons in this Kingdom. Your Lordship has also effected an extensive revision of the statutes, regulating the care and treatment of the insane and the protection of their property.”

London. Samuel Highly (1854) 156 pages.

By Robert L. Dugdale.

A study in crime, pauperism, disease and heredity. “‘The Jukes’ has long been known as one of those important books that exert an influence out of all proportion to their bulk. It is doubtful if any concrete study of moral forces is more widely known, or has provoked more discussion, or has incited a larger number of students to examine for themselves the immensely difficult problems presented by the interaction of ‘heredity’ with ‘environment.’“

London Putnam (1910) 137 pages.

By L. Forbes Winslow.

“Every form of passion described by me I consider as a " tragedy " hence the adoption of the name previous to discussing the same. As to the photographs the collection is a most unusual and an unique one.”

London Ouseley (1913) 352 pages.

By H. L. Adam.

“The Indian criminal may be said to be a much better man than the criminal of the West.”

London John Milne (1909) 360 pages.

By H. B. Irving.

“The cases in this volume have been selected from French criminal records of the nineteenth century. They are studies of real culprits, whose guilt is, in all but one instance, beyond suspicion of a doubt.”

Heinemann (1901) 356 pages.

By Charles Goring.

Classic statistical study published in 1913 measuring nearly 100 physical and mental characteristics of English convicts to determine their deviation from the normal. Notable features of the author's research methodology were the use of the newly-developed Pearson product moment correlation coefficient and the method of comparing groups of both criminals and non-criminals for the same characteristics. The author's analysis of the data rejects the view that there are specific physical and mental characteristics identifying the criminal. He further concludes that the influence of heredity and the presence of mental defectiveness are far more significant factors than parental influence in the development of criminal behavior.

HMSO (1913) 450 pages.