Why Does Employers’ Unwillingness to Hire Ex-Offenders Matter?
Table of Contents
Short Answer
It matters because unemployment is one of the strongest predictors of reoffending. When employers refuse to hire ex-offenders, more of them stay jobless, more of them return to prison, and taxpayers cover the cost twice: once to keep someone incarcerated, and again through the crime that follows when they can’t find work after release.
Quick Summary
- Employment cuts the risk of reoffending by roughly a third to a half, according to research by Christopher Uggen.
- Jailing one person costs far more per year than that same person would earn in an average full-time job, in both Australia and the UK.
- A Texas re-entry program more than doubled the employment rate of participating parolees and cut re-incarceration by over a third.
- Three main policy options exist: re-entry programs, financial incentives for employers, and restrictions on criminal history checks.
- A targeted ‘matching’ model, where only convictions relevant to the job can be considered, is the most balanced option on the table.
Figure 1: Annual cost of incarceration vs average full-time earnings
Why This Problem Matters
Unemployment is closely tied to reoffending. Research has repeatedly identified it as a leading risk factor for ex-offenders returning to crime (Peterson, 2016; Mears et al., 2014). A county-level study by D’Alessio and colleagues (2014) found that repeat offending tracked local unemployment rates even after accounting for individual offender characteristics. In a separate three-year study of 51 parolees, Bahr and colleagues (2010) found that those who worked more hours had noticeably lower recidivism than those who were unemployed or underemployed. Perhaps the clearest figure comes from Uggen (2000), who found that employment reduces the risk of reoffending by between one third and one half.
That relationship has a direct price tag attached to it. Keeping someone in prison is expensive, and the gap between that cost and what the same person could earn in a job is enormous.
In Australia, incarcerating one person costs an estimated $436 a day, or roughly $159,510 a year, in 2025, with state and federal governments together spending $6.8 billion annually on prisons, a 50 percent increase over ten years. That’s well above the average full-time income of $90,416. The pattern holds in the UK too, where a prison place in England and Wales cost an average of £51,724 in 2022 to 2023, against average full-time earnings of £39,039.
Employment doesn’t just keep people out of prison. It shapes identity and mental wellbeing too. Research by Brown (2011) describes work as central to a person’s sense of self and social role, something that matters enormously for someone trying to rebuild a life after release.
If employers stay unwilling to hire ex-offenders, the pattern is predictable: unemployment in this group stays high, reoffending stays high, and the bill for keeping people locked up keeps growing.
Figure 2: The link between employment status and reoffending
Why Employers Hesitate to Hire Ex-Offenders
Several factors stack up against ex-offenders in the job market: inadequate job skills, gaps in education, limited work experience, a hole in their employment history, and stigma attached to a criminal record (Peterson, 2015; Harley, 2014). Correctional services in some regions, such as South Australia, have expanded prisoner skills and education programs before release, but that effort loses much of its value if employers screen candidates out before those skills are even considered.
Part of the issue is how much access employers have. In many places, including Australia, employers can view an applicant’s criminal record regardless of the role being applied for. In South Australia, every conviction, minor or serious, stays on record for a minimum of ten years.
Lam and Harcourt (2003) argue that using criminal records this broadly as a screening tool amounts to systematic discrimination. Most convictions, in fact, have little bearing on how someone would perform in a given role. It’s worth noticing the inconsistency here: employers generally can’t ask about age, health history, marital status, sexual orientation, religious belief, or family plans, yet a decade-old, largely irrelevant conviction remains fair game.
Employers’ hesitation isn’t always backed by evidence, either. Nally and colleagues (2014) found employers were often reluctant to hire ex-offenders out of liability concerns, viewing them as untrustworthy or higher risk. But data doesn’t support the assumption that ex-offenders are more likely to leave a job or perform poorly once hired.
Three Policy Options on the Table
Fixing this isn’t just about goodwill. It requires balancing an employer’s legitimate need to assess risk against an ex-offender’s right to a fair shot. Three approaches come up repeatedly in the research.
Option 1: Re-Entry Programs
McWhirter (2013) makes the case for structured re-entry programs that connect ex-offenders directly with employers before and after release. Ideally, these start about six months before release and include individual vocational assessment, job preparation, and one-on-one mentoring (Harley, 2014).
The clearest real-world evidence for this approach comes from Texas. The Reintegration of Offenders program, known as RIO, has supported over 150,000 parolees across more than 90 cities, working with 61 prisons and over 20,000 employers. Coordinators start working with inmates while they’re still incarcerated, building a personal employment plan and staying involved until the person is actually placed in a job.
Figure 3: RIO program outcomes compared to non-participants
The numbers speak for themselves. Among African American parolees, employment within a year jumped from 30 percent to 66 percent for RIO participants. Re-arrest rates dropped from 57 percent to 48 percent, and re-incarceration fell from 38 percent to 23 percent. Getting people into work quickly after release saved Texas more than $10 million a year in avoided incarceration costs, and employed ex-offenders generated roughly $1,000 annually in tax revenue (Finn, 1998).
Option 2: Incentives and Insurance for Employers
Thompson and Cummings (2010) found that financial incentives, such as an upfront payment or tax credit, can make employers more willing to hire ex-offenders. The US Work Opportunity Tax Credit is a real example: employers can claim up to $2,400 a year for each ex-offender they hire (Hamersma, 2005).
Pairing an incentive with liability insurance addresses a different worry: what if the person does something dishonest on the job? New Hampshire’s Employment Security program offers a free fidelity bond for the first six months of employment for ‘at-risk’ hires, reimbursing employers in full if something goes wrong. The results are striking. Out of 42,000 placements under this bonding program, only 460 involved any dishonest act, a success rate of nearly 99 percent.
Option 3: Restrict Criminal History Checks
Peterson (2015) argues that because broad criminal history checks are often discriminatory and carry real consequences for ex-offenders, their use should be limited. At least 27 US states already restrict how employers can use criminal records in hiring decisions (Harley, 2014). With prison populations rising and most employers still running full criminal history checks, the combination works directly against equal opportunity (Holzer et al., 2003).
One proposal worth highlighting is Peterson’s (2016) ‘New Matching+’ model, which ties access to an applicant’s criminal history to two conditions: the conviction has to be relevant to the job, and the offense has to be serious, defined here as carrying at least three months of imprisonment. Under that model, minor convictions stop counting against someone applying for an unrelated job. A conviction for financial fraud would reasonably matter for an accountant role, for instance, while it would have little bearing on a warehouse or retail position.
Figure 4: The three policy options compared
The Recommended Approach
Re-entry programs risk being seen by the public as rewarding past crimes, and incentive-based approaches have historically struggled. Older research by Jacobs and colleagues (1984) found that financial incentives often weren’t large enough to actually shift employer attitudes, and that pattern has been hard to fully overturn since.
That leaves restricting criminal history checks, specifically through a matching model, as the strongest option to trial. It keeps the core logic employers already rely on (checking whether a record poses a genuine risk for a specific job) while stopping records from blocking people out of jobs that have nothing to do with their past offense. Peterson (2016) argues this approach increases ex-offender employment without abandoning the risk-screening employers already expect, which should translate into fewer people reoffending and a safer community overall.
Implementation Considerations
A matching model isn’t free to set up. A few practical issues are worth flagging:
- Working out which crimes are genuinely relevant to which jobs takes detailed, ongoing effort, and mistakes are possible.
- Smaller businesses may struggle with the added administrative cost of a more selective screening process.
- Some roles will be harder than others to match cleanly against a specific type of offense.
- Shortening how long minor convictions stay on record, or removing them altogether, could offset some of the added cost.
None of this works in isolation. Reforming criminal history checks should sit alongside employer education about the real, evidence-based risk of hiring an ex-offender, borrowing a page from the other two options rather than discarding them entirely.
Bottom Line
Employers’ reluctance to hire ex-offenders isn’t just a fairness issue. It’s a cost issue, a safety issue, and a policy issue with a measurable price tag attached. The evidence points toward a specific, targeted fix: limit criminal history checks to convictions that are actually relevant to the job, rather than letting an old, unrelated record block someone out of the workforce for a decade. Paired with better employer education and continued investment in re-entry support, that shift offers a realistic path to lower reoffending rates and a safer community, without asking taxpayers to keep footing an avoidable bill.
Frequently Asked Questions
