Pretending it didn’t Happen

In the late 1990s, a campaign began to “ban the box.” The goal of the campaign was to prohibit employers from asking about criminal convictions on employment applications. The campaign has since been expanded to prohibit landlords from asking about criminal convictions on rental applications. Fundamentally, the campaign wants us to pretend that it didn’t happen.

Consider the context. An individual with a criminal conviction committed an act that the State deemed worthy of arrest and prosecution. If the offense was serious enough, the individual was incarcerated. On the one hand, the government throws people in jail for engaging in certain actions. On the other hand, the government wants to prohibit employers or landlords from even asking about those actions.

“Ban the box” advocates claim that the convicted have served their time and paid their debt to “society.” They shouldn’t continue to be punished. They go on to argue that recidivism increases when convicted criminals can’t find employment or housing. Whether this is true or not is irrelevant. Employers and landlords are not responsible for preventing recidivism. That responsibility rests solely with the individual convicted of a crime. It is his choice. And this gets to the heart of the matter.

Choices have consequences. In committing a crime, an individual makes a very poor choice. Laws that “ban the box” force us to ignore this fact. Individuals, the advocates claim, shouldn’t be judged by their past choices, and to put this into practice, employers and landlords must be prohibited from making choices based on the facts.

Pretending that something didn’t happen doesn’t change the fact that it did happen. Pretending is an attempt to distort reality, and the attempt makes rational decision making impossible. If an employer or landlord wants to give a convicted criminal a “second chance,” he should be free to do so. And he should also be free to reject applications from convicted criminals.

The criminal made a choice when he committed a crime. Absolving him of the consequences of that choice encourages further bad choices. We do him no favors in pretending that it didn’t happen.