Devah Pager

The Mark of a Criminal Record

With over 2 million individuals currently incarcerated, and over half a million prisoners released each year, the large and growing number of men being processed through the criminal justice system raises important questions about the consequences of this massive institutional intervention. This article focuses on the consequences of incarceration for the employment outcomes of black and white job seekers. The present study adopts an experimental audit approach—in which matched pairs of individuals applied for real entry‐level jobs—to formally test the degree to which a criminal record affects subsequent employment opportunities. The findings of this study reveal an important, and much underrecognized, mechanism of stratification. A criminal record presents a major barrier to employment, with important implications for racial disparities.

Black Neighbors, Higher Crime? The Role of Racial Stereotypes in Evaluations of Neighborhood Crime

This article investigates the relationship between neighborhood racial composition and perceptions residents have of their neighborhood’s level of crime. The study uses questions about perceptions of neighborhood crime from surveys in Chicago, Seattle, and Baltimore, matched with census data and police department crime statistics. The percentage young black men in a neighborhood is positively associated with perceptions of the neighborhood crime level, even after controlling for two measures of crime rates and other neighborhood characteristics. This supports the view that stereotypes are influencing perceptions of neighborhood crime levels. Variation in effects by race of the perceiver and implications for racial segregation are discussed.

The Use of Field Experiments for Studies of Employment Discrimination: Contributions, Critiques, and Directions for the Future

Have we conquered the problems of racial discrimination? Or have acts of discrimination become too subtle and covert for detection? This discussion serves to situate current debates about discrimination within the context of available measurement techniques. In this article, the author (1) considers the arguments from recent debates over the contemporary relevance of labor market discrimination; (2) provides a detailed introduction to experimental field methods for studying discrimination (also called audit studies), including an overview of the findings of recent audit studies of employment; (3) addresses the primary critiques of the audit methodology and the potential threats to the validity of studies of this kind; and (4) considers how we might reconcile evidence from field experiments with those from analyses of large-scale survey data, each of which points to markedly different conclusions. Only by gathering rigorous empirical evidence can we begin to understand the nature of race and racial discrimination in labor markets today.

The Structure of Disadvantage: Individual and Occupational Determinants of the Black-White Wage Gap

This study is motivated by the idea that the racial gap in earnings is generated not only by individual differences but also by systematic variation in the occupational structure that attenuates or exacerbates the effects of race. Using data from the 1990 census and the Dictionary of Occupational Titles, a hierarchical linear modeling approach is employed that allows the simultaneous exploration of the mechanisms of income inequality operating both within and between occupations. Among private-sector employees, striking evidence shows that racial disparities increase in both absolute and percentage terms as one moves up the occupational earnings hierarchy. The association between average occupational earnings and within-occupation racial disadvantage reveals an overlooked source of racial earnings inequality which constrains the opportunities available to upwardly mobile black men in the private sector. This association cannot be explained by measured individual characteristics, or by the status, demographic composition, or skill demands of occupations. In the public sector, on the other hand, racial inequality in earnings is not systematically associated with average occupational earnings, and is instead more closely tied to individual human capital and occupational placement. The implications of these results are considered and directions for future research are suggested.

Estimating Risk: Stereotype Amplification and the Perceived Risk of Criminal Victimization

This paper considers the process by which individuals estimate the risk of adverse events, with particular attention to the social context in which risk estimates are formed. We compare subjective probability estimates of crime victimization to actual victimization experiences among respondents from the 1994 to 2002 waves of the Survey of Economic Expectations (Dominitz and Manski 2002). Using zip code identifiers, we then match these survey data to local area characteristics from the census. The results show that: (1) the risk of criminal victimization is significantly overestimated relative to actual rates of victimization or other negative events; (2) neighborhood racial composition is strongly associated with perceived risk of victimization, whereas actual victimization risk is driven by nonracial neighborhood characteristics; and (3) white respondents appear more strongly affected by racial composition than nonwhites in forming their estimates of risk. We argue these results support a model of stereotype amplification in the formation of risk estimates. Implications for persistent racial inequality are considered.

Medir a discriminação

Os debates a respeito da relevância contemporânea da discriminacao sao obscurecidos pela ausencia de tecnicas rigorosas de mensuracao. Como separar os efeitos gerados pela raca das varias outras fontes de desigualdade social? O artigo examina as abordagens normalmente empregadas para medir a discriminacao, como estudos de percepcao, levantamentos de atitudes, analises estatisticas, experimentos de laboratorio e de campo. As varias abordagens sao resumidas e o alcance e a limitacao de cada uma delas sao avaliados. Embora nenhum metodo de pesquisa seja isento de falhas, a analise cuidadosa dos metodos disponiveis ajuda a estabelecer a correspondencia entre o problema da pesquisa e a estrategia empirica adequada.

Meta-analysis of field experiments shows no change in racial discrimination in hiring over time

Significance Many scholars have argued that discrimination in American society has decreased over time, while others point to persisting race and ethnic gaps and subtle forms of prejudice. The question has remained unsettled due to the indirect methods often used to assess levels of discrimination. We assess trends in hiring discrimination against African Americans and Latinos over time by analyzing callback rates from all available field experiments of hiring, capitalizing on the direct measure of discrimination and strong causal validity of these studies. We find no change in the levels of discrimination against African Americans since 1989, although we do find some indication of declining discrimination against Latinos. The results document a striking persistence of racial discrimination in US labor markets. This study investigates change over time in the level of hiring discrimination in US labor markets. We perform a meta-analysis of every available field experiment of hiring discrimination against African Americans or Latinos (n = 28). Together, these studies represent 55,842 applications submitted for 26,326 positions. We focus on trends since 1989 (n = 24 studies), when field experiments became more common and improved methodologically. Since 1989, whites receive on average 36% more callbacks than African Americans, and 24% more callbacks than Latinos. We observe no change in the level of hiring discrimination against African Americans over the past 25 years, although we find modest evidence of a decline in discrimination against Latinos. Accounting for applicant education, applicant gender, study method, occupational groups, and local labor market conditions does little to alter this result. Contrary to claims of declining discrimination in American society, our estimates suggest that levels of discrimination remain largely unchanged, at least at the point of hire.

Race, Self-Selection, and the Job Search Process

While existing research has documented persistent barriers facing African-American job seekers, far less research has questioned how job seekers respond to this reality. Do minorities self-select into particular segments of the labor market to avoid discrimination? Such questions have remained unanswered due to the lack of data available on the positions to which job seekers apply. Drawing on two original data sets with application-specific information, we find little evidence that blacks target or avoid particular job types. Rather, blacks cast a wider net in their search than similarly situated whites, including a greater range of occupational categories and characteristics in their pool of job applications. Additionally, we show that perceptions of discrimination are associated with increased search breadth, suggesting that broad search among African-Americans represents an adaptation to labor market discrimination. Together these findings provide novel evidence on the role of race and self-selection in the job search process.

Inequality and Punishment A Turning Point for Mass Incarceration

After decades of steady expansion, state prison populations declined in recent years for the first time since 1972. Though the size of the decrease was small, it masks substantial state heterogeneity. This article investigates variation in state-level incarceration rates from 1980 through 2013, examining the factors associated with the rise and decline in prison populations. We find evidence for four key stories in explaining the prison decline: crime, budgets, politics, and inequality. Many of these relationships are consistent across decades, including the role of racial composition, violent crime, and Republican political dominance. In contrast, states’ fiscal capacity and economic inequality became more important after 2000. This research emphasizes the importance of examining changes over time in the correlates of incarceration growth and decline and represents the first effort to systematically understand the recent reversal in the trajectory of incarceration practices in the United States.

The Republican ideal?: National minorities and the criminal justice system in contemporary France

In recent years, worsening economic conditions have led to growing tensions between native-born French and a rising tide of immigrants, largely from North Africa and other parts of the developing world. The French criminal justice system has responded to perceived levels of social disorder and delinquency in these ethnic neighborhoods by increasing police surveillance, widening court jurisdiction, and imposing harsher penalties for offenders. In part as a result, Frances foreign and immigrant residents, who comprise only about six percent of the population overall, now represent nearly thirty percent of the French prison population. Though the rise in reported crime has no doubt influenced recent trends in crime control, there is reason to believe that the formal orientation toward crime control is more than simply a function of crime itself. Little attention has been given, however, to the broader social and political context in which crime control strategies are developed. In this project, I conduct a comparative analysis of punishment regimes across local jurisdictions (departements ) in order to assess the relationship between concentrations of national minorities and the institutional response to crime. By exploiting geographic variation in the concentration of national and ethnic minorities across France, I find strong associations between increasing population heterogeneity and the functioning of the local criminal justice apparatus.