Crime, Migrants and Employment*
| Author | I R Coyle,R D Francis |
| DOI | 10.1177/000486587600900203 |
| Published date | 01 June 1976 |
| Date | 01 June 1976 |
AUST &NZ JOURNAL
OF
CRIMINOLOGY (June·1976)9 (71-75)
CRIME,
MIGRANT,S AND
EMPLOYMENTo
I R Coyle]
and
R D
Francist
71
SUMMARY
Job
applications
were
sent to seventy-six private
and
seventy-six public
companies. Applicants
were
identified as Australian or Yugoslav
born
and
half of
each of these
two
groups
were
identified as ex short-term prisoners, the
remaining half
carried
no criminal identification.
Neither ethnic
background
nor criminal history
had
asignificant effect on time
taken to reply to
the
application,
percentage
of replies or
percentage
of negative
replies. These statements
are
equally true of
both
public
and
private companies.
The
only significant finding was an interaction of ethnic
background
-
criminal
background
with respect to
non
...
replies. This
was
interpreted
as a
courtesy factor.
Introduction
The
employment
opportunities of convicted offenders has
been
the subject of
various studies.
Commonly
they
report
data
on convicted offenders and, in some
cases, specify the offence.
Most
commonly
the
method
used is an unobtrusive measure
(Webb
et al,
1966) such as fictitious applications specifying or
not
specifying acriminal
record. This
method
of using applications to
newspaper
advertisements has
been
applied
inavariety of contexts.
In
addition
to its criminological application
the
technique has also
been
used
to investigate housing discrimination against
Aborigines (Bochner, 1972).
Employers' reactions to convicted
men
was
the
subject of a
study
by Martin
(1962) whose
data
was
based
on the attitudes
and
actions of employers in
the
English
town
of Reading. He
attempted
to
answer
questions concerning attitudes
and
practices
of
employers towards
men
previously convicted of criminal
offences
and
concerning
men
already in
employment
and
suspected of
committing criminal offences. Some particularly interesting findings
emerged
from this study. At least two-thirds
of
all firms in Reading
had
employed
offenders at
some
time
or another (it might
be
noted
here
that Reading has a
gaol). About
55~
of offenders stayed in their job for at least six months
and
employers
made
greater
discrimination against sexual offenders.
Schwarz
and
Skolnick (1969) see the issue of the
employment
of convicted
offenders as a sociological study of "legal stigma".
One
of their empirical studies
involved
the
use of four
employment
folders given to 100 unwitting employers.
oThe writers would like to express their sincere thanks to Ms JAbell, Mr L Bakewell, Ms D Manning
and
Mr R Vinten for their assistance in this study.
tLecturer in Psychology, Swinburne College of Technology, Melbourne.
tSenior Lecturer in Psychology, La
Trobe
University, Melbourne.
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