【经济学人】囚犯与就业市场 | 2017.05.18 | 总第919期

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DION got his first paying job at 14—which would be admirable, except that he was selling crack cocaine . He spent much of his early adulthood bouncing between prison and the streets of Yonkers, in New York state. Then, a few months out of one four-year spell behind bars, he discovered Greyston bakery. Founded by a Jewish engineer-turned-Buddhist monk, Greyston practices “non-judgment”. To get a job, people need only provide their names and telephone numbers, and turn up on time when a vacancy arises.

迪恩在他十四岁时就得到了第一份工作，这本是件极好的事，只可惜他做的工作是销售强效可卡因。他成年后几年内的大部分时间都辗转在监狱和纽约扬克斯市的街道上。然后，在结束一段四年刑期后的几个月后他找到了格雷斯顿面包房。其犹太裔创办人以前是工程师，后来信奉佛教。格雷斯顿面包房遵从“不做评判”的原则。想要获得工作，人们只需要提供姓名和电话号码，然后在有空缺的时候准时出现就可以了。

• crack cocaine：高效可卡因

Most companies are far more discerning, particularly when it comes to people like Dion. Perhaps half of America’s private-sector employers ask job applicants to declare their criminal records, and two-thirds routinely run checks before taking people on . They see it as necessary due diligence. Unfortunately, checks that individual firms believe to be prudent are collectively bad for the 7m Americans who have spent time in prison and the 70m with a criminal record—numbers that may increase if Jeff Sessions, the hardline attorney-general , pushes through tougher sentencing rules. Keeping convicts away from jobs may also be harming America.

但大多数公司雇人时都会更加挑剔，尤其是对待像戴恩这样的人。在美国，可能有一半的私营企业老总在招聘员工时，会问及他们的犯罪记录，三分之二的老总会在雇用员工之前，对他们进行例行调查。他们认为这是必要的，是在尽职尽责。但是，有700万美国人曾经坐过牢，7000万美国人有过犯罪记录，如果强硬的司法部长杰夫·塞辛斯推行更加严格的判刑原则，人数可能还会更多。这些私人企业认为是小心谨慎的做法对这些人来说总体上是坏事。罪犯找不到工作同样可能也会危害美国。

• Take on: 雇用

• Hardline: 强硬的

• Attorney-general：司法部长

Nearly half of all ex-prisoners re-offend within their first year of release—a share that might be lower if more found honest work. The Centre for Employment Opportunities, a charity, places former convicts in 75-day work programmes. Participants are paid daily and receive help to find permanent jobs. A randomised controlled trial in which 977 former prisoners who came through the charity’s doors either received the full complement of services or very few suggested that the intervention cuts reoffending by 19 percentage points.

将近一半有前科的人在他们刑满释放一年内会再次犯罪，如果他们中的更多人可以找到一份正当的工作，这个比例可能会降低。就业机会中心作为一个慈善机构，为那些有前科的人提供了一个75天的工作项目。参与者按日领取薪水，并可以通过机构帮助找到一份长期的工作。一个随机的对照实验以977位进入了这个慈善机构的有前科的人作为研究对象，结果表明，无论他们接受了全部服务，还是只接受了一点儿，这种干预使再犯罪率降低了19%。

• Re-offend：再犯罪，再犯法

In an effort to force employers to change, 26 state and 150 municipal legislatures have adopted “ban the box” legislation that removes declarations of criminal history from job-application forms. On April 1st an executive order by Barack Obama’s administration came into effect, banning the box for all federal jobs, amounting to 250,000 jobs a year.

为了设法迫使雇主做出改变，26个州和150个市的立法机构通过了一项立法，把犯罪记录声明的复选框从工作申请表中移除。4月1日，奥巴马政府出台的行政命令生效，为所有联邦岗位取消这个复选框，总数为一年二十五万个工作岗位。

Don’t point

别指

Banning the box may, however, have unfortunate consequences. Two American academics, Amanda Agan and Sonja Starr, have studied the effect of bans in New Jersey and New York. They created dummy job applicants with typically black names like Jermaine and Malcolm, and tracked how employers responded to those beside dummy applicants with typically white names, such as Cody and Scott. They found that whereas black men with invented criminal histories received more responses from companies after the change in the law, black men without criminal histories received fewer. Presumably, some employers began to interpret black-sounding names as a signal of criminality.

然而，这项举措或许也造成了一些不尽如人意的后果。Amanda Agan 和 Sonja Star两位美国学者研究了禁令在新泽西和纽约的效果。他们用典型的黑人名字比如Jermaine和Malcolm创造了虚拟的工作申请，对比用典型白人名字比如Cody和Scott制作的工作申请，然后追踪雇主的反应。 期待您的翻译，明天会有针对这句话的长难句解析哟~ 大概是一些雇主开始把疑似的黑人名字解读为犯罪的信号。

Two things might, however, persuade employers to change their minds. First, negligent-hiring lawsuits —in which a firm is sued for employing someone who commits a crime at work—are terrifying but rare. Second, it is just possible that former convicts might be more productive than the other candidates who apply for a particular job.

但是或许有两件事情能迫使雇主们改变想法。第一，雇佣过失诉讼——公司因为雇佣在工作中犯罪的人而遭到诉讼——虽然后果严重但其实很少出现。其次，有前科的人可能在申请某些特定的工作时比其他候选人更具有竞争力。

• negligent-hiring lawsuits：雇佣过失诉讼

Devah Pager, a sociologist at Harvard University, has tracked the performance of 8,000 former felons who entered the American army after passing a screening process in the years between 2002 and 2009. She finds that the ex-cons were slightly more likely to be undisciplined but were also promoted unusually quickly. Is that just a quirk of military culture? It would be worth finding out.

哈佛大学的社会学家Devah Pager追踪调查了8000位重罪犯，他们在2002年到2009年间通过筛选程序进入了美国军队。她发现有前科的人虽然都稍微较不守纪律，但是他们晋升速度却快得出奇。难道这只是军队文化造成的怪相吗？这非常值得探寻。

• Felons：n.重罪犯

• screening process：筛选程序

• undisciplined：无纪律的

翻译 ▍ Bibobibo，笨小孩，下罗小柜员，陌上

审核 ▍白夜叉

图文编辑 ▍澜意

责任编辑 ▍毛毛