Marked: Race, Crime, and Finding Work in an Era of Mass Incarceration (Hardcover)

~ (Author) "At the start of the 1970s, incarceration appeared to be a practice in decline..." (more)
Key Phrases: negligent hiring laws, criminal record condition, black nonoffenders, African Americans, Experimental Design, United States (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Using scholarly research, field research in Milwaukee, and graphics, [Pager] shows that ex-offenders, white or black, stand a very poor chance of getting a legitimate job.... Both informative and convincing." - Library Journal "Marked is that rare book: a penetrating text that rings with moral concern couched in vivid prose - and one of the most useful sociological studies in years." - Michael Eric Dyson "How do you tell when a democracy is dead? When concentration camps spring up and everyone shivers in fear? Or is it when concentration camps spring up and no one shivers in fear because everyone knows they're not for 'people like us.'... Devah Pager uses a simple technique to show how mass incarceration has undone the small amount of racial progress achieved in the 1960s and '70s." - Nation"

Product Description

Nearly every job application asks it: have you ever been convicted of a crime? For the hundreds of thousands of young men leaving American prisons each year, their answer to that question may determine whether they can find work and begin rebuilding their lives.

            The product of an innovative field experiment, Marked gives us our first real glimpse into the tremendous difficulties facing ex-offenders in the job market. Devah Pager matched up pairs of young men, randomly assigned them criminal records, then sent them on hundreds of real job searches throughout the city of Milwaukee. Her applicants were attractive, articulate, and capable—yet ex-offenders received less than half the callbacks of the equally qualified applicants without criminal backgrounds. Young black men, meanwhile, paid a particularly high price: those with clean records fared no better in their job searches than white men just out of prison. Such shocking barriers to legitimate work, Pager contends, are an important reason that many ex-prisoners soon find themselves back in the realm of poverty, underground employment, and crime that led them to prison in the first place.

 

“Using scholarly research, field research in Milwaukee, and graphics, [Pager] shows that ex-offenders, white or black, stand a very poor chance of getting a legitimate job. . . . Both informative and convincing.”—Library Journal

 

“Marked is that rare book: a penetrating text that rings with moral concern couched in vivid prose—and one of the most useful sociological studies in years.”—Michael Eric Dyson

 

 

See all Editorial Reviews

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Product Details Hardcover: 256 pages Publisher: University Of Chicago Press; illustrated edition edition (October 1, 2007) Language: English ISBN-10: 0226644839 ISBN-13: 978-0226644837 Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.2 x 0.9 inches Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies) Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews) Amazon.com Sales Rank: #450,455 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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More About the Author

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Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Index | Back Cover | Surprise Me!

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Inside This Book (learn more)

First Sentence:
At the start of the 1970s, incarceration appeared to be a practice in decline. Read the first page

Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
negligent hiring laws, criminal record condition, black nonoffenders, credentialing effects, criminal credential, applicants with criminal records, black testers, callback rates, criminal background information, negative credential, tester pairs, suburban employers, prisoner reentry, white testers, returning inmates, labor market consequences, audit study, criminal stigma, audit studies, felony drug conviction, minority employers, prison boom, mass incarceration, correspondence tests, reentry process

Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
African Americans, Experimental Design, United States, Missing the Mark, The Mark of Race, Bureau of Justice Statistics, New York, William Julius Wilson, Los Angeles

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Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Index | Back Cover | Surprise Me!

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	85% buy the item featured on this page: Marked: Race, Crime, and Finding Work in an Era of Mass Incarceration 5.0 out of 5 stars (2) $17.15
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Customer Reviews

2 Reviews 5 star:  (2) 4 star:    (0) 3 star:    (0) 2 star:    (0) 1 star:    (0)           Average Customer Review 5.0 out of 5 stars (2 customer reviews)		Share your thoughts with other customers:
Most Helpful Customer Reviews 11 of 11 people found the following review helpful: 5.0 out of 5 stars Timely scholarship, September 10, 2007 By  Karen Franklin "Forensic Psychologist" (El Cerrito, CA, USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)    If this depressing book cannot convince people that racism is alive and well in America today, I don't know what could. Dr. Pager reports on an empirical research project in which teams of well-put-together white and black college students went job-hunting in and around Milwaukee, with one member of each team "marked" as an ex-convict. What she found is astonishing. Black job applicants WITHOUT drug convictions fared no better than white ex-cons WITH convictions; with "two strikes" against them, black men with a drug conviction had almost no chance of getting a call-back from a prospective employer. This problem was especially pronounced in the suburbs, which are gaining an increasing proportion of jobs despite the fact that many job-seekers remain in the cities. Dr. Pager also includes informative and well-written chapters on the state of mass incarceration in the United States today, as well as the massive and growing problem of prisoner reentry. With more than 600,000 people pouring out of prisons each year, Dr. Pager's book is a must-read for anyone concerned with the public policy aspects of the reentry problem. This is yet another excellent entry into the recent crop of books cataloging the collateral consequences of mass imprisonment. (See my Amazon list on "Prison World" for more.) 8 of 8 people found the following review helpful: 5.0 out of 5 stars Prison employee, December 2, 2007 By  PRH - See all my reviews This book is loaded with useful information for the student of corrections, criminology and/or sociology. While this is a book rich with very well done research, Pager's honest admission that low sample numbers in her research, (which need to be expanded on to bolster confidence in results), might undermine the message to some policy makers. Also, while Pager recommends a few ideas, the book seems to offer more in the way of what is going on and not as much about what to do about it. However, in my opinion, the paucity of solutions contributes to this as an objective piece of research. The bottom line is that this is a very relevant and important book that should start a dialogue.		Ad feedback   Search Customer Reviews Only search this product's reviews

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: University Of Chicago Press; illustrated edition edition (October 1, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0226644839
• ISBN-13: 978-0226644837
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.2 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #450,455 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Timely scholarship, September 10, 2007

By	Karen Franklin "Forensic Psychologist" (El Cerrito, CA, USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

If this depressing book cannot convince people that racism is alive and well in America today, I don't know what could. Dr. Pager reports on an empirical research project in which teams of well-put-together white and black college students went job-hunting in and around Milwaukee, with one member of each team "marked" as an ex-convict. What she found is astonishing. Black job applicants WITHOUT drug convictions fared no better than white ex-cons WITH convictions; with "two strikes" against them, black men with a drug conviction had almost no chance of getting a call-back from a prospective employer. This problem was especially pronounced in the suburbs, which are gaining an increasing proportion of jobs despite the fact that many job-seekers remain in the cities. Dr. Pager also includes informative and well-written chapters on the state of mass incarceration in the United States today, as well as the massive and growing problem of prisoner reentry. With more than 600,000 people pouring out of prisons each year, Dr. Pager's book is a must-read for anyone concerned with the public policy aspects of the reentry problem. This is yet another excellent entry into the recent crop of books cataloging the collateral consequences of mass imprisonment. (See my Amazon list on "Prison World" for more.)

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Prison employee, December 2, 2007

By	PRH - See all my reviews

This book is loaded with useful information for the student of corrections, criminology and/or sociology. While this is a book rich with very well done research, Pager's honest admission that low sample numbers in her research, (which need to be expanded on to bolster confidence in results), might undermine the message to some policy makers.

Also, while Pager recommends a few ideas, the book seems to offer more in the way of what is going on and not as much about what to do about it. However, in my opinion, the paucity of solutions contributes to this as an objective piece of research.

The bottom line is that this is a very relevant and important book that should start a dialogue.