RESOURCE FILES

Chapter 7

Constructing Difference: Social Deviance

Sociologists at Work

 


Richard Schwartz and Jerome Skolnick

The Criminal Applicant

In the early 1960s, Richard Schwartz and Jerome Skolnick constructed an interesting experiment to see if deviant labels restrict people's life chances.1 Posing as representatives of an employment agency, they prepared four fictitious employment folders.

In all the folders their "client" was described as a 32-year-old single male with a high school education and a record of successive short-term jobs as a kitchen helper, maintenance worker, and handyman. The folders differed only in the applicant's past record of criminal court involvement.

The first folder indicated that he had been convicted and sentenced for assault.

In the second, he had been tried for assault but found innocent.

The third folder also showed that he had been tried and acquitted but included a supportive letter from the judge certifying the finding of not guilty and reaffirming the legal presumption of innocence.

The fourth made no mention of any criminal record, implying that the "client" had never been involved in the court system.

The researchers contacted a hundred potential employers, who were randomly divided into four groups of 25. Each group received one of the folders. Each employer was asked whether he or she could use the man described in the folder. To ensure the reality of the situation, the employers were not told that they were part of a study.

Of the 25 employers who received folder 4 (no record), nine indicated an interest in hiring the man.

Of those who received folder 3 (acquittal plus the letter from the judge), six showed an interest in hiring him.

Three of the potential employers who read folder 2 (acquittal) showed an interest.

Finally, of the employers who received folder 1 (convicted and sentenced for assault), only one expressed any interest in hiring the man.

The study showed that employment opportunities are severely restricted by the presence of a deviant label.

Why would such apparent discrimination occur? Potential employers have justifiable reasons for refusing to hire ex-convicts: Paying one's debt to society is no guarantee of future legal behavior.

Furthermore, Americans have become increasingly distrustful of our criminal justice system. Many believe that prisons do not rehabilitate but actually make convicts more deviant by teaching them better ways of committing crime and by providing social networks that facilitate criminal activity on the outside.2

Although stigmatization due to fear of future criminal activity may be understandable or even justifiable, it doesn't account for Schwartz and Skolnick's findings. A mere charge of criminal activity conjured suspicions of tainted character and was often sufficient to prevent an employer from hiring the man.

The labeling process is apparently powerful enough, even in the absence of wrongdoing, to produce a durable loss of status for the individual. This finding challenges our important legal contention that a person is "innocent until proven guilty."

1Schwartz, R. D., & Skolnick, J. H. 1962. "Two studies of legal stigma." Social Problems, 10, 133-138.

2Johnson, R. 1987. Hard time: Understanding and reforming the prison. Monterey, CA: Brooks/Cole.

David Newman and Rebecca Smith. (Created September 14, 1999). Copyright Pine Forge Press.
http://www.pineforge.com/newman.