More than half of unemployed young men in the US have criminal records, study says
“The unemployment system almost never looks at the role that criminal history plays in keeping people out of the workforce,” said Shawn Bushway, senior policy researcher at RAND Corporation.
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Shirin Ali | Feb. 21, 2022
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Researchers from RAND Corporation studied the effect criminal records have among unemployed American men.
They estimated more than half of unemployed men living in America in their 30s have a history of being arrested or convicted of a crime.
The prevalence of arrests for all Black men, both employed and unemployed, was roughly 33 percent higher than it was for white men at every age that researchers examined.
Having a criminal record in the U.S. may be more common than it seems, as new research suggests more than half of unemployed men in their 30s living in the U.S. have a history of being arrested or convicted of a crime.
It's estimated that as many as one in three American adults have been arrested at some point in their life and men are more likely than women to have a criminal record. Researchers from the RAND Corporation, a global policy think tank, noted that those figures are a result of the country’s aggressive law enforcement practices over the past several decades.
Researchers at RAND decided to study the effects a criminal record has on men in America, publishing their results in the journal Science Advances. They found that by the age of 35, about 64 percent of unemployed men in America have been arrested and 46 percent have been convicted of a crime.
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https://thehill.com/changing-america/respect/accessibility/595178-more-than-half-of-unemployed-young-men-in-the-us-have