In this article, we contend that employers’ willingness to provide former prisoners with integrative forms of employment is related to the extent to which liberal societies abstract, idealise and prioritise the interests of the self over the interests of society. Using the United States of America as a critical case to illustrate this argument, we unite the neoinstitutional sociology of organisations with Weick’s small wins approach to problem solving to show how an especially individualistic embodiment of liberalism contributes to the construction of a social and institutional reality that discourages firms from behaving integratively towards former prisoners. In so doing, we produce a conceptual framework that points to ways by which the scarcity of integrative firms within individualist liberal societies might be addressed.
ArblasterA (1984) The Rise and Decline of Western Liberalism, Oxford: Basil Blackwell Ltd.
2.
BergerPLBergerBKellnerH (1973) The Homeless Mind: Modernization and Consciousness, New York: Random House.
3.
BergerPLLuckmannT (1966/1991) The Social Construction of Reality, London: Penguin Books.
4.
BraithwaiteJ (1989) Crime, Shame and Reintegration, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
5.
BrownM (2005) Liberal exclusions and the new punitiveness. In: PrattJBrownDBrownMet al. (eds) The New Punitiveness: Trends, Theories, Perspectives, Devon: Willan Publishing, pp. 272–289.
6.
Bushway S (2003) Reentry and Prison Work Programs: Employment Dimensions of Reentry: Understanding the Nexus between Prisoner Reentry and Work. Urban Institute Reentry Roundtable, NY University Law School, 19–20 May 2003. New York, NY: NY University Law School.
7.
BushwaySApelR (2012) A signalling perspective on employment-based reentry programming: Training completion as a desistance signal. Criminology & Public Policy11(1): 21–50.
8.
CrutchfieldRD (2014) Get a Job: Labor Markets, Economic Opportunity, and Crime, New York and London: New York University Press.
9.
DeckerSHSpohnCOrtizNRet al. (2014) Criminal Stigma, Race, Gender and Employment: An Expanded Assessment of the Consequences of Imprisonment for Employment, Washington, DC: US Department of Justice, National Institute of Justice.
10.
DelgadoM (2012) Prisoner Reentry at Work: Adding Business to the Mix, Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers.
11.
DouglasM (1986) How Institutions Think, Syracuse: Syracuse University Press.
12.
DouglasM (1992) Risk and Blame: Essays in Cultural Theory, NY: Routledge.
13.
DouglasMWildavskyA (1982) Risk and Culture: An Essay on the Selection of Technical and Environmental Dangers, California: University of California Press.
14.
FletcherDR (2003) Employers, recruitment and offenders: Underlining the limits of work-focused welfare?Policy & Politics31(4): 497–510.
15.
GarlandD (2001) The Culture of Control: Crime and Social Order in Contemporary Society, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
16.
GeigerB (2006) The case for treating ex-offenders as a suspect class. California Law Review94: 1191–1242.
17.
GillM (1997) Employing ex-offenders: A risk or an opportunity?The Howard Journal36(4): 337–351.
18.
GoffmanE (1963) Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity, Harmondsworth: Penguin Books Ltd.
19.
HallPASoskiceD (2001) Varieties of Capitalism: The Institutional Foundations of Comparative Advantage, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
20.
HallettM (2012) Reentry to what? Theorising prisoner reentry in the jobless future. Critical Criminology20: 213–228.
21.
HannekenJ (2013) Between the exceptional individual and the exception: Scandals of self-ownership. Homo Oeconomicus30(3): 349–368.
22.
HarrisPMKellerKS (2005) Ex-offenders need not apply. Journal of Contemporary Criminal Justice21(1): 6–30.
23.
HarrisonBSchehrRC (2004) Offenders and post-release jobs. Journal of Offender Rehabilitation39(3): 35–68.
24.
HeydonG (2012) Risk and rehabilitation in criminal records checking by employers: What employers are doing and why?Employment Law Bulletin18(8): 129–135.
HiskesRP (1982) Community Without Coercion: Getting Along in the Minimal State, Newark: University of Delaware Press.
27.
HolzerHJRaphaelSStollMA (2007) The effect of an applicant’s criminal history on employer hiring decisions and screening practices: Evidence from Los Angeles. In: BushwaySStollMAWeimanDF (eds) Barriers to Reentry? The Labor Market for Released Prisoners in Post-Industrial America, New York, NY: Russell Sage Foundation, pp. 117–150.
28.
HortonCA (2005) Race and the Making of American Liberalism, New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
29.
JacobsJB (2015) The Eternal Criminal Record, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
30.
JeppersonRLMeyerJW (1991) The public order and the construction of formal organizations. In: PowellWWDiMaggioPJ (eds) The New Institutionalism in Organizational Analysis, Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, pp. 204–231.
31.
LaceyN (2008) The Prisoners’ Dilemma: Political Economy and Punishment in Contemporary Democracies, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
32.
LagesonSEVuoloMUggenC (2015) Legal ambiguity in managerial assessments of criminal records. Law & Social Inquiry40(1): 175–204.
33.
LamHHarcourtM (2003) The use of criminal record [sic] in employment decisions: The rights of ex-offenders, employers and the public. Journal of Business Ethics47: 237–252.
34.
LavelleA (2008) The Death of Social Democracy: Political Consequences in the 21st Century, Hampshire: Ashgate Publishing Ltd.
35.
LutzC (2015) No one is minding the store: MacIntyre’s critique of modern liberal individualism. Perspectives on Political Science44(2): 115–121.
36.
MacIntyreA (1988) Whose Justice? Which Rationality?, Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press.
37.
MarunaS (2001) Making Good: How Ex-Convicts Reform and Rebuild Their Lives, Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.
38.
MarunaS (2011) Judicial rehabilitation and the ‘Clean bill of Health’ in criminal justice. European Journal of Probation3(1): 97–117.
39.
MeyerJWRowanB (1977) Institutionalized organizations: Formal structure as myth and ceremony. American Journal of Sociology83(2): 340–363.
MillsCW (2012) Occupy liberalism! Or, ten reasons why liberalism cannot be retrieved for radicalism (and why they’re all wrong). Radical Philosophy Review15(2): 305–323.
42.
NaylorBPatersonMPittardM (2008) In the shadow of a criminal record: Proposing a just model of criminal record employment checks. Melbourne University Law Review32: 171–198.
43.
PagerD (2003) The mark of a criminal record. American Journal of Sociology108(5): 937–975.
44.
PagerD (2007) Two strikes and you’re out: The intensification of racial and criminal stigma. In: BushwaySStollMAWeimanDF (eds) Barriers to Re-entry? The Labor Market for Released Prisoners in Post-industrial America, New York, NY: Russell Sage Foundation, pp. 151–173.
45.
PagerD (2009) Marked: Race, Crime, and Finding Work in an Era of Mass Incarceration, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
46.
PagerDQuillianL (2005) Walking the talk? What employers say versus what they do. American Sociological Review70(3): 355–380.
47.
ParkerR (2002) Coordination and competition in small business policy: A comparative analysis of Australia and Denmark. Journal of Economic IssuesXXXVI(4): 935–952.
48.
PeckJTheodoreN (2008) Carceral Chicago: Making the ex-offender employability crisis. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research32(2): 251–281.
49.
SandelM (1998) Liberalism and the Limits of Justice, 2nd ed. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
50.
ScottWR (2008) Approaching adulthood: the maturing of institutional theory. Theory and Society37(5): 427–442.
51.
ScottWR (2014) Institutions and Organizations: Ideas, Interests, and Identities, 4th ed. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, Inc.
52.
SelznickP (1957) Leadership in Administration, New York, NY: Harper & Row.
53.
Society of Human ResourceManagement (2012) Background Checking—The Use of Criminal Background Checks in Hiring Decisions, Alexandria, VA: Society for Human Resource Management.
54.
SolomonAL (2015) In search of a job: Criminal records as barriers to employment. Journal of Current Issues in Crime, Law, and Law Enforcement8(1): 151–163.
55.
StreeckW (1997) Beneficial constraints: On the economic limits of rational voluntarism. In: Rogers HollingsworthJBoyerR (eds) Contemporary Capitalism: The Embeddedness of Institutions, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 197–219.
UggenC (1999) Ex-offenders and the conformist alternative: A job quality model of work and crime. Social Problems46(1): 127–151.
58.
UggenCVuoloMLagesonSet al. (2014) The edge of stigma: An experimental audit of the effects of low-level criminal records on employment. Criminology52(4): 627–654.
59.
Van de VenAH (2007) Engaged Scholarship: A Guide for Organizational and Social Research, New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
60.
VoronovMVinceR (2012) Integrating emotions into the analysis of institutional work. Academy of Management Review37(1): 58–81.
61.
WacquantL (2000) The new ‘peculiar institution’: On the prison as surrogate ghetto. Theoretical Criminology4(3): 377–389.
62.
WacquantL (2001) Deadly symbiosis: When ghetto and prison meet and mesh. Punishment & Society3(1): 95–134.
63.
WacquantL (2005) Race as civic felony. International Social Science Journal57(183): 127–142.
64.
WacquantL (2007) Territorial stigmatization in the age of advanced marginality. Thesis Eleven91: 66–77.
65.
WeickKE (1984) Small wins: Redefining the scale of social problems. American Psychologist39(1): 40–49.
66.
WeimanDFStollMABushwayS (2007) The regime of mass incarceration: A labor-market perspective. In: BushwaySStollMAWeimanDF (eds) Barriers to Re-entry? The Labor Market for Released Prisoners in Post-Industrial America, New York, NY: Russell Sage Foundation, pp. 29–79.
67.
WesternB (2007) The penal system and the labor market. In: BushwaySStollMAWeimanDF (eds) Barriers to Re-entry? The Labor Market for Released Prisoners in Post-industrial America, New York, NY: Russell Sage Foundation, pp. 335–359.
68.
YoungJ (1999) The Exclusive Society, London: Sage Publications Ltd.
