In October of 2017, Governor Brown signed into law a statewide ban-the-box (BtB) policy, which went into effect January 1, 2018. How do policies like this one affect the perceptions and experiences of formerly incarcerated job seekers? Drawing from surveys of probationers, Sandra has investigated what the formerly incarcerated know about the California’s BtB policies; their perceptions of the effectiveness of such policies at removing barriers to their employment; how BtB affects their own patterns of job search; and how race, class, and gender inform the perceptions the formerly incarcerated have and the experiences they describe.

This event is open to UC Berkeley affiliates only. We invite the public to join us at our speaker series events.

Sandra Smith is Interim Director of IRLE for the 2017-2018 academic year. Her research focuses on questions of urban poverty and joblessness, social capital and social networks, racial inequality, and trust. She is also a professor of sociology at UC Berkeley, and is working on a book entitled Want, Need, Fit: Cultural Logics of Job-Matching Assistance.