
Marked
Race, Crime, and Finding Work in an Era of Mass Incarceration
Devah Pager(Author)
University of Chicago Press
Published on 1. October 2007
Book
Hardback
256 pages
978-0-226-64483-7 (ISBN)
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.
Reviews / Votes
"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"More details
Language
English
Place of publication
Chicago
United States
Publishing group
The University of Chicago Press
Target group
Professional and scholarly
Dimensions
Height: 24 mm
Width: 16 mm
Thickness: 2 mm
Weight
510 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-226-64483-7 (9780226644837)
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Schweitzer Classification
Person
Devah Pager is associate professor of sociology at Princeton University.