Noncongruent policymaking by cities for citizens with criminal records: Representation, organizing, and “Ban the Box”

Abstract

Generally, public (and private) policymakers adopt policies—laws, rules, and procedures—that encumber groups with negative social constructions and low political capital. Sometimes, however, they adopt policies beneficial, not burdensome, to them. We examine beneficial policy adoption for one disadvantaged group—U.S. citizens with criminal records. Our focus is the adoption of “Ban the Box” (BTB) policies that embargo criminal records questions on job applications and defer them during hiring by employers. We leverage extant data on annual BTB policy adoptions, novel annual city-level data on community organizing groups and descriptive representation (i.e., race and gender), and event history analysis for a sample of 256 U.S. cities to provide a comprehensive understanding of the city contexts associated with the spread of BTB policy adoptions by cities across the U.S. between 2004 and 2019. Although descriptive, the findings deepen and broaden the scholarship about the roles of civil society organizations and descriptive representation for beneficial policymaking for disadvantaged groups and the connection of interests and representation for abolishing some punitive policy designs by public (and private) actors.