RESOURCE FILES
Chapter 7
Constructing Difference: Social Deviance
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. |