Moral shocks and small wins: Encouraging firms based in liberal societies to behave integratively towards former prisoners

Abstract

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.

Keywords

employer attitudes ex-offenders ex-prisoners liberal individualism liberalism neoinstitutionalism new institutionalism prisoner re-entry prisoner reintegration

Introduction

In this article, we respond to the work of criminologists who call for the prisoner re-entry literature to be informed by critical theorising that examines the social and economic forces that affect opportunities for integration (Hallett, 2012; Young, 1999). In the vein of Young (1999), we contend that the more a society sanctifies and prioritises the moral rights of the individual over the moral rights of society, the less integratively will employers tend to behave towards former prisoners. Borrowing from Braithwaite (1989), we define ‘integrative’ behaviour on the part of commercial enterprises as a willingness to reciprocate former prisoners’ efforts to integrate into the formal economy by providing employment opportunities that are secure, adequately remunerated and conducive to occupational and social advancement. In addition to prosecuting our core argument, we aim to unite the pragmatic and emancipatory goals of re-entry and critical scholars, respectively, by offering a conceptual framework that pays heed to the structural forces that disadvantage subaltern populations, and points to ways by which the scarcity of integrative firms within individualist liberal societies might be addressed.

To give effect to our aims, we bring together the neoinstitutional sociology of organisations (organisational neoinstitutionalism) and Weick’s (1984: 40) ‘small wins’ problem-solving approach. Organisational neoinstitutionalism is a perspective that is primarily concerned with understanding how the social reality in which firms are embedded conditions their behaviour. By materialising the reality that shapes firm behaviour in liberal societies, and by showing how this reality produces outcomes that are the antithesis of liberalism’s claimed ideals, we contribute discursive material that activists might draw on to provoke the kind of ‘moral shock’ that institutionalists argue may promote change (Voronov and Vince, 2012: 67). Weick’s (1984) pragmatic small wins approach shows how liberal employers’ reluctance to provide decent employment opportunities to former prisoners, especially historically oppressed sub-populations of the formerly incarcerated (Hallett, 2012; Pager, 2003), might be rendered as a collection of less intimidating and more approachable problems that relatively fragile actors (Wacquant, 2007: 73) can resolve.

While holding that our contribution has relevance for all liberal societies, we focus primarily on the United States of America (US) because it is a nation that has come to greatly accentuate the interests of the individual vis-à-vis the interests of society. Moreover, almost all liberal states are becoming Americanised, in terms of rising imprisonment rates and increasingly less forgiving policy settings (Maruna, 2011). We focus on the era following the post-war boom because it constitutes a changing cultural period that has coincided with the advent of ‘mass imprisonment’ (Garland, 2001: 5) and the emergence of a labour market sufficiently hostile to former prisoners to be considered a national concern (Delgado, 2012). This changing context allows us to analyse the contingent nature of liberalism and underscore the fact that it is sensitive to a range of social and economic forces (Horton, 2005). We cautiously draw hope from such contingency, as it indicates that substantial change is possible.

Our article commences by establishing liberalism as a socio-material and contingent force, and then draws on organisational neoinstitutionalism to elaborate how an especially individualistic embodiment of this doctrine may contribute to the construction of a social reality that discourages firms from behaving integratively towards former prisoners. To close, we draw on Weick’s (1984) small wins strategy to show how scholars, policy-makers and practitioners might collaborate to induce employers to behave more integratively towards former prisoners.

Liberalism in theory and practice

Liberalism is a moral and political philosophy that is animated by the ideal of individual liberty and freedom from interference or dominion by a higher authority. At the core of liberalism is a fierce, protective interest in what is a taken-for-granted ontological conception of the individual, who is regarded as a transcendental moral being (Sandel, 1998: 7–11). This idealised individual is not subordinate to institutions; rather, institutions honour and serve the individual, whose rights to dignity, self-creation and the pursuit of his/her own ideal of the good life (Sandel, 1998) are, in philosophical terms, inviolable and universally bestowed. It is in this sense that the terms ‘equality’, ‘egalitarianism’, ‘tolerance’, ‘inclusion’ and the notion of a ‘self-owned’ life are associated with liberalism. While this abstract, ahistorical account presents liberalism as a benign doctrine and a force for good, a substantial body of scholarship (Arblaster, 1984; MacIntyre, 1988; Mills, 2008; Sandel, 1998; Turner, 2015) exposes the decontextualised, pre-social individual at the centre of liberalism as an unreflexive creation of white, gendered, privileged experience. Some critics of liberalism condemn the gulf between reality and the assumptions underpinning the social contract at liberalism’s core, which presupposes dealings amongst individuals with equal rights. This premise is so far removed from historical and contemporary empirical actuality (Mills, 2008) that it has been suggested that the philosophy of liberalism may be drawn on to theorise the ‘epistemology of ignorance’ (Turner, 2015: 475–478).

The substantial critique of the notion of the equal, rights-bearing individual (Mills, 2008; Young, 1999) raises critical questions as to whether liberalism is capable of rehabilitation or evolution, irretrievably flawed, or, in some societies, actually institutionalised with a degree of integrity. Views on this matter differ. Some theorists underscore the historical contingency of liberalism (Arblaster, 1984; Horton, 2005) and see this doctrine as founded on admittedly admirable ideals. Others see liberalism as, ‘not an acute problem to be fixed; it is a chronic disorder to be managed’ (Lutz, 2015: 117, citing MacIntyre, 1988). More ferocious critics would reclaim and revolutionise liberalism itself, by forcing proponents to confront its self-deceiving premises and recognise that the social contract at liberalism’s core is in fact an ‘intrawhite’ contract that has best served the interests of elites, who have profited from the economic exploitation of subaltern populations ever since its rise in the seventeenth century (Mills, 2008: 1386–1388, 2012).

The debates outlined above interrogate the essential character of liberalism, query its mutability across societies and time, and point to its propensity to marginalise and subordinate populations for the social and economic advantage of elites. Critical structural and social theorists make the convincing case that the economic turmoil following the post-war Long Boom precipitated a ‘slid[e] into instability and crisis’ (Hobsbawm, 1994: 403, cited in Young, 1999: 6), depriving those who might wish to advance ‘the best of liberalism’ (Arblaster, 1984: 348) of the economic base by which its ideals might be practically achieved and sustained. This, in turn, has allegedly enabled a strain of liberalism that has little regard for inclusion or egalitarianism to re-emerge and penetrate the institutional orders of advanced capitalist democracies (Lavelle, 2008), thereby exacerbating labour market stratification and diminishing the upward social mobility of historically and newly oppressed peoples (Crutchfield, 2014; Hallett, 2012).

These transnational ‘deep level changes’ (Hallett, 2012: 220) place liberal societies under conditions of economic and social strain, and provide an opportunity to examine the integrity of liberalism’s core claims. In such a context, the limits of liberal societies’ proclaimed belief in the universality of natural rights becomes clear. As expressed by Turner (2015: 473), societies that ‘espouse universal equality tend to bifurcate humanity into classes of “persons” and “subpersons” and to apply a fuller “schedule of rights” to the former’.

But while this bifurcation appears to be a common feature of liberal societies, the social groups targeted for marginalisation and exploitation vary, as does the scale and nature of the marginalisation. Lacey (2008) identifies that the institutional foundations of formerly homogenous societies (typically Northern European societies) are adept at integrating insiders into society through redistributive measures and regular forms of employment, but less so outsiders, by which she refers to ethnic minorities and migrants. By contrast, ‘settler’ societies built on the violent expropriation and exploitation of indigenous and slave populations appear to reproduce and renew these racial hierarchical relations in ways that facilitate the continued subordination and control of historically oppressed populations (Wacquant, 2001).

In sum, liberal societies would seem to share the propensity to both selectively and racially designate full personhood, hence Mills’ (2008: 1381) claim that the liberal social contract ‘has really been a racial one, an agreement among white contractors to subordinate and exploit nonwhite noncontractors for white benefit’. What differentiates liberal societies, we argue, is the extent to which those individuals who do qualify as full rights-bearers, particularly those in power, are institutionally constrained through formal or informal social controls. We suggest that the intensity of this constraint is related to the extent to which the individual at the centre of liberalism is abstracted and honoured, and the moral rights of this actor asserted – that is, the degree to which the social construction of the autonomous individual has been institutionalised. We advance our argument by differentiating two varieties of liberalism (Mills, 2012: 307) that are widely considered to be oppositional, these being communitarian liberalism and liberal individualism. Our aim is to illuminate the distinguishing features of the latter variant that are salient to the behaviour of firms, and former prisoners’ labour market experiences.

The United States of America: The alpha individualist liberal society in perspective

Above, we suggested that the philosophy of liberalism is vulnerable to perversion and enabling of racist outcomes, and, in practice, may become a fundamentally exploitative and exclusive force (Mills, 2008; Young, 1999; and see Brown, 2005). However, we also observed that liberalism is ‘not a monolith’, but a doctrine that comes in many forms, which are contingent upon historical structural and institutional forces (Arblaster, 1984; Horton, 2005; Lacey, 2008; Mills, 2012: 307). These influences engender distinguishable rationalities that affect the character of formal organising in societies (Jepperson and Meyer, 1991) and the everyday consciousness of polity members (Berger et al., 1973), including who are deemed full members of society.

European societies have a weaker enthusiasm for the powers and interests of the individual and a greater tendency to concede that structure may intervene in an individual’s life-course (Young, 1999). This concession encourages the toleration of modest interference from the state in individuals’ lives in order to balance the means and the ends of liberalism, and also to contain the extent to which power concentrates in the hands of those who control capital. By contrast, a legacy of settler liberal societies is their sacralisation of civil society and their authorisation of individual actors to determine their own interests, and to play a significant role in the public sphere (Jepperson and Meyer, 1991: 206–207, 216). These individualist liberal societies include the US, the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand – the same societies that comparative capitalist scholars refer to as ‘liberal market societies’ (Hall and Soskice, 2001), thereby indicating the centricity of the market as an organising apparatus of and for the members of civil society. Such regimes fetishize the individual (Douglas, 1992), who is placed ‘at the centre of all social, ethical and political aims’ (Hiskes, 1982: 13), and whose rights are prized over and above other social goods. This human subject must, in order to sustain the philosophy of liberal individualism, esteem the laws that enable the pursuit of private visions of the good life (Sandel, 1998) and uphold the notion of personal accountability. Inspired by these beliefs, individualist liberal polities tend to be hostile to redistributive measures (Arblaster, 1984). They also valorise individual endeavour and enterprise, and are generally reluctant to curb employers’ freedom or initiative (Parker, 2002). The involvement of firms in collective projects that endeavour to promote societal, rather than individual, goals is left to the rational voluntarism of employers (Streeck, 1997), and the capacity of the state to influence private actors is constrained (Hall and Soskice, 2001). Choice and competition are seen as virtues in which opportunity for individuation and self-realisation inheres; it is through choice, competition and personal responsibility that the liberal character may be fully developed and expressed (Arblaster, 1984), and the individual may transcend circumstance.

As a consequence of these institutional arrangements, keenly individualist cultures are populated by loosely connected, disembedded, atomised strangers (Sandel, 1998) who have at their disposal fewer of the informal mechanisms of social control that are features of the more interdependent, communitarian liberal societies. As individualist societies struggle to implicate their citizens in community (Sandel, 1998), they tend to turn to the coercive and sanctioning might of the state, in spite of their avowed distaste for state intrusion (Braithwaite, 1989; see also Young, 1999). Thus, Lacey (2008) finds a notable difference between the imprisonment rates of more communitarian liberal societies or ‘coordinated market economies’ (e.g. Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden, Norway, Denmark and Finland) and the aforementioned liberal market economies. In the latter, greater incarceration means that a larger proportion of people exit prison in need of gainful employment than is the case in coordinated market economies.

In the US, which Young (1997: 22) describes as a ‘quite exceptionally exclusionary society’, economic integration has become a significant labour market concern, given the numbers incarcerated and the unusually harsh employment restrictions imposed on former prisoners (Delgado, 2012). As this was not the case prior to the 1970s, there has been substantial debate about the causal drivers of this historical change. Structural factors have featured prominently in this discussion. Weiman et al. (2007: 42) underscore the role played by the ‘dramatic reversal in the economic fortunes of less educated men’ that took place between the late 1970s and 1980s. This misfortune, they contend, was propelled by the decline of the manufacturing sector, which previously had provided full-time, secure jobs to workers with little education and few skills, these being features that disproportionately characterise the incarcerated (see also Crutchfield, 2014).

The polarization of the labour market also trails on the heels of a further structural adjustment that has not served former prisoners well: liberal states’ revocation of their commitment to full employment. In such a labour market context, the costs to employers of indulging their biases diminishes, a development that has proved ruinous for already-immiserated populations who have long suffered systematic discrimination and subordination. Taken together, the programs of research conducted by Wacquant (2000, 2001, 2005, 2007), Pager (2003, 2007, 2009) and Pager and Quillian (2005) lead to the conclusion that discrimination against former prisoners is racially charged, and a variation of a pre-existing ‘system of stratification’ (Pager, 2009: 160; see also Decker et al., 2014; Peck and Theodore, 2008).

The neoinstitutional sociology of organisations and Scott’s three pillars of institutions

The neoinstitutional sociology of organisations enables organisations to be analysed as embodiments of the social context in which they are embedded. Within this body of work, Scott’s (2014: 55–85) ‘three pillars’ model of institutions has been widely adopted, as it is a framework capable of synthesising and operationalising the many different elements of institutional structure. Scott’s (2014) model holds that institutional structure is comprised of a cultural-cognitive, a normative and a regulative pillar that interact to shape social actors’ everyday consciousness and behaviour.

The cultural-cognitive pillar of institutions consists of taken-for-granted, culturally informed beliefs, which determine the acceptability of behaviours and produce typified ways of behaving. Some behaviours (e.g. screening out dangerous individuals from employment candidate pools), are accepted by communities as self-evidently reasonable, or, to use Jacobs’ (2015: 225) words, ‘taken as noncontroversial’. Over time, the very conventionality of the behaviour encourages mimesis and compliance. Conducting criminal records checks, for example, simply becomes ‘how these [recruitment] things are done’ (Berger and Luckmann, 1966/1991: 77).

The normative pillar of institutions pertains to that which society deems desirable. In Scott’s (2014: 65) words, when encountering the normative components of an institution, ‘[t]he central imperative confronting actors is … “Given this situation, and my role within it, what is the appropriate behavior for me to carry out?”’

The regulative pillar of institutions is made manifest in formalised rules (e.g. legislative frameworks, licensing systems, policies, formalised processes), and the existence of authorised bodies that enforce compliance. Actors typically realise that it is expedient and in their interest to comply with the regulative elements of institutions, and thus the logic animating the regulative pillar of social institutions is described as one of instrumentality (Scott, 2014: 60). For example, while many employers are compelled by law to conduct criminal record checks, they commonly do so voluntarily, anxious about liability laws that render employers culpable for negligent hiring decisions (Jacobs, 2015).

Below, we draw on extant studies to show how these three broad categories of institutional elements create pressures that affect employers’ volition and preferences, and shape their behaviour towards former prisoners. The majority of the studies cited below are US-based, but we also reference studies conducted in other individualist liberal societies (e.g. Australia, the UK) for two reasons. First, to surface the breadth of institutional elements that we claim individualist liberal societies are capable of fostering; second, to illustrate the presence of similar institutional conditions in other jurisdictions where an individualist strain of liberal doctrine also flourishes.

Institutional elements within individualist liberal societies that discourage firms from behaving integratively towards former prisoners

Cultural-cognitive institutional elements. What the term ‘ex-prisoner’ means (and therefore the qualities and attributes automatically associated with former prisoners) varies within and across societies, depending on the cognitive and normative content associated with that typification. The ontological premises of liberalism cleave both human attainment and failing from social context, and emphasise the extent to which the fortunes of individuals are attributable to the moral character of the individual. Within this paradigm, offenders are culpable, ‘repeat losers’ of society (Geiger, 2006: 1191), deserving of contempt; by contrast, successful business owners are morally impregnable winners, deserving of respect. In neoinstitutional terms, circumambient cultural frameworks affect our ‘internal interpretive processes’ (Scott, 2014: 67).

However, while these processes may be internal and interpretive, they are far from subjective. Because most members of society derive much of their information about ex-prisoners from the media and popular culture, former prisoners are not rendered ‘fully real’ (Berger and Luckmann, 1966/1991: 43). Instead, caricatures purveyed by the media template stereotypical imageries of former prisoners, and transmogrify simplified and subjective beliefs into shared, objectivated truths (Berger and Luckmann, 1966/1991; Scott, 2014). These ‘truths’ shape the attitudes of employers towards former prisoners and inform how these candidates ought to be processed when applying for jobs. A substantial body of literature shows that significant numbers of employers believe former prisoners are untrustworthy, dangerous and dishonest (Hirschfield and Piquero, 2010), a ‘serious threat to employees, customers and clients’ (Fletcher, 2003: 507), pathological and unreformable (Geiger, 2006: 1198, 1229), poor quality employees (Bushway, 2003), undeserving of all but the most limited assistance, and certainly not entitled to good jobs (Uggen, 1999). These truths give licence to unabashed discrimination. There is often little need for employers to explain or defend discriminatory practices towards former prisoners, as the ingrained tenets of liberalism render the troubles of these individuals patently of their own making. In short, the social reality of individualist liberal societies renders it utterly sensible and non-controversial to discriminate against former prisoners (Jacobs, 2015: 225).

Although the ex-con typification is a mental construct, it has attained such a degree of facticity that this shared belief outweighs scientific evidence that suggests the majority of former offenders pose very little risk to persons and property in an employment situation (Lam and Harcourt, 2003), and stymies ‘probabilistic thinking’ (Douglas, 1992: 56) about the actual risks of hiring former prisoners, if indeed such risks can be accurately calculated in the first place (Jacobs, 2015). Most scholars with an advocacy interest in former prisoners’ labour market situation lament these consequences and propose solutions, such as legislative change, to control wanton employment discrimination. But the proposed remedies frequently contravene fundamental liberal tenets (merit, personal responsibility and self-reliance, for example) and ‘fetish beliefs’ (Douglas, 1986: 43), such as faith in individuals’ capacity for self-development and transcendence. Accordingly, many of the remedies put forward are unworkable or, if enacted, are ignored by employers and the courts. Lam and Harcourt (2003), for example, draw on evidence from a range of individualist liberal societies and observe that the legal systems of these societies privilege the rights of property owners (i.e. employers) and the rights of the community (employees and customers, clients, suppliers) over the rights of job-seeking former offenders, who are systematically excluded from decent employment opportunities.

It is not mere employer preferences, then, that lie at the root of the labour market discrimination experienced by former prisoners, but a cultural bias altogether deeper.

Normative institutional elements. Researchers exploring employment discrimination against former offenders write of the stigma of a criminal history (e.g. Pager, 2003), and the ‘digital scarlet letter’ (Geiger, 2006: 1200) that is the eternal curse (Jacobs, 2015) of the former offender. UK- and US-based studies show that, upon learning that a candidate has a criminal history, employers reach automatically for an internalised, ideologically informed (Hirschfield and Piquero, 2010) moral code or hierarchy against which they process and classify the severity of the offences committed (Fletcher, 2003). These reactions suggest that, as well as being concerned about the risks of hiring former prisoners, employers’ hiring behaviour is also partly driven by visceral emotions such as repugnance, anger and fear.

Firms also exclude former prisoners from employment opportunities based on the more general determination that former prisoners are afflicted by a turpitude that is directly attributable to their moral character (Harris and Keller, 2005), while professions determined to maintain their prestige use licensing restrictions to control admission (Jacobs, 2015: 267–268).

Curiously, it is widely accepted that the principle of self-development and the human subject’s capacity for transcendence does not apply to the former offender, whose character is apparently immutable. But any capricious application of a principle must be justifiable if the ideology advancing the principle is to be defensible, and here liberalism has two most useful, inextricably linked conceits – merit and the principle of lesser/greater eligibility.

The principle of lesser/greater eligibility holds that some individuals are immanently more deserving than others and in times of scarcity this organising principle justifies differential treatment (Peck and Theodore, 2008). Former offenders, although likely to be in serious need of support, are commonly deemed the least worthy of society’s munificence. Uggen (1999), writing from within the US, identifies community antipathy towards the released prisoner as a fundamental source of the intractability of the former prisoner integration problem. Having established that good quality jobs have a statistically significant effect on the integration prospects of former prisoners, Uggen (1999: 145) strikes a grave philosophical difficulty: ‘[h]ow can policy makers justify allocating the best jobs (or the training required to access them) to the least deserving members of a large and needy underclass population?’ Gill (1997: 345) identifies the ‘hard line’ that some UK employers are willing to articulate, this being that ‘ex-offenders were undeserving [whereas] others were “genuine” job seekers’.

If we hold the principle of lesser eligibility in mind and consider good jobs as a scarce resource, two strands of thought become salient: (a) we can detect a moral logic informing employer discrimination against former offenders, which casts discrimination as appropriate and as the fulfilment of a social obligation, and (b) the fact that firms have qualms about the potential reputational impact of providing employment opportunities to former prisoners indicates that behaving integratively towards them is potentially a matter of organisational legitimacy. Most organisations seek to acquire legitimacy; they do not deliberately jeopardise this asset given that legitimacy is crucial to a firm’s survival (Meyer and Rowan, 1977). Thus, not only may employers be motivated by a personal moral aversion to hiring former offenders, they are also constrained by normative pressures relevant to the viability of their business.

Regulative institutional elements. While there is much evidence to suggest that cultural-cognitive and normative institutional elements shape firms’ behaviour towards former prisoners, the volume of hard regulation directed against former offenders has attracted the lion’s share of scholarly attention. As Jacobs (2015: 226) details, an impressive body of literature inventories the legislative burdens shouldered by former offenders, particularly in the US, where the policy and legal systems ‘seem specially designed to facilitate private sector bias against convicted persons’. Uggen et al. (2014: 649), citing Goffman, pithily capture the situation: ‘persons who were once “discreditable” if their crimes were discovered are today formally “discredited” at early stages of the hiring process’. Of course, in the US many employers do not stand on formality in order to exclude young Black men from employment opportunities, and instead engage in racialised statistical discrimination, which Peck and Theodore’s (2008: 258) research suggests has,

… morphed into a self-perpetuating cycle of economic exclusion, criminality, incarceration, followed by institutional branding and even higher rates of – now ostensibly ‘justified’, if not officially sanctioned – economic exclusion.

In terms of legally imposed restrictions, it is not unusual for jurisdictions to flatly prohibit firms from employing people convicted of a criminal offence, irrespective of the nature of the crime committed. But even in situations where criminal background checks are optional and organisational policy encourages managers to use their discretion when recruiting, managers are inclined to ‘use this … discretionary power to protect themselves in their hiring decisions’, fearful of the litigious context in which they are embedded (Lageson et al., 2015: 196).

The typical means by which discovery of a criminal history is made are criminal background checks, which have become a standard procedure (Harrison and Schehr, 2004: 46) for many employers. The criminal records system ensures that former offenders may not ‘pass’ as ‘normal’ members of society (Goffman, 1963). In neoinstitutional terms, the criminal records system enables employers to locate former prisoners and ‘[handle]… them in the appropriate manner’ (Berger and Luckmann, 1966/1991: 56), which is to discard them from candidate pools unless this practice is specifically curtailed through legislation (Naylor et al., 2008). Considerable evidence suggests that Harrison and Schehr’s (2004) earlier appraisal of the US situation still holds, and is applicable to other individualist liberal societies. A survey by the Society for Human Resource Management in the US (2012) shows that 86 per cent of employers routinely conduct such checks with 69 per cent of employers conducting checks for all advertised positions. Fletcher (2003) found that 85 per cent of the businesses participating in his UK-based research enquired about applicants’ criminal histories, and an Australian study found that close to 70 per cent of the employers surveyed conduct criminal record checks (Heydon, 2012).

Accordingly, a major preoccupation of those who study the employment problems faced by former offenders in individualist liberal societies is the striking increase in the use of criminal records systems and the potential for significant social exclusion. Australian-based scholars, Naylor et al. (2008: 173), locate this trend within a ‘broader preoccupation with security and the management of risk’ which has begun to permeate society, while US-based scholars Holzer et al. (2007) and Jacobs (2015) surmise that chief among the factors encouraging employers to conduct criminal history checks is a fear of negligent hiring suits. Given this risk, employers can hardly be blamed for pragmatically deciding that the best defence is secured not merely by examining a candidate’s criminal record, but by altogether shunning any applicant who has a criminal past. When considered in conjunction with the full suite of institutional elements documented above, however, the exclusion of former prisoners from the formal economy seems not merely pragmatically inclined, but ‘infused with value’ (Selznick, 1957: 17).

Moral shocks and small wins – A model to support diagnosis and collaborative action

The evidence detailed above suggests that three independently strong institutional logics combine to construct a social reality that holds it is right-minded, appropriate, and in the interests of firms with decent employment opportunities to shun former prisoners. Thus, we see a logic of orthodoxy, a logic of appropriateness, and a logic of instrumentality (Scott, 2014) working in concert to produce, legitimate and normalise what Peck and Theodore (2008: 277) have described as an overdetermined system.

That such arrangements might be the regrettable but inevitable result of value-neutral economic forces is a view that can surely be sustained only by those who benefit from such arrangements and fully subscribe to the ontology of liberalism. To borrow the words of Douglas (1992) and Maruna (2001), individuals who seek to ‘make good’ in the face of the full might of these institutional arrangements and a culture that un-ironically asserts that their life is within their control might justifiably feel that they are at the centre of some ‘cosmic plot’ (Douglas, 1992: 76). Somewhere halfway between the two lived experiences is perhaps close to the truth: the consignment of former prisoners to jobs without prospects or hope (or, indeed, to joblessness) is an outcome of an institutional design that is enabled by the cosmology of liberalism. In light of the institutional workings detailed above, Maruna’s (2001: 9) surprising and now classic findings make perfect sense: self-delusion about one’s agentic capacities (‘wilful, cognitive distortion’ about one’s ‘control over the future’) is necessary if one is to endure and persist with the process of making good. Although Maruna’s study was conducted in the UK, his observations would seem equally germane to other individualist liberal societies, and especially the US, where former offenders’ citizenship rights, including access to several forms of welfare, are commonly rescinded (Jacobs, 2015), leaving the narrative of the ‘exceptional individual’ (Hanneken, 2013) as one of the few social resources of which former prisoners may avail themselves in order to support and sustain their integrative endeavours.

In the face of such inconsistencies between the proclaimed ideals of liberalism and the manner in which this doctrine actually manifests, one might imagine that the ‘fantasmic frames’ (Voronov and Vince, 2012: 67) that help us cope with our roles in the institutional order (and thereby abet its perpetuation) might be ripe for dislodging, since they are wont to fail in all manner of ways,

including by ceasing to shield individuals or collectives from existential fears, failing to repress shameful or humiliating experiences … [or] when the reality experienced by individuals is simply too brutal and the physical or psychic pain can no longer be obscured by the fantasmic frame (Voronov and Vince, 2012: 67).

This implies that exposing the wider community to an uncompromising representation of the institutional workings that lock former prisoners out of the mainstream labour market might help dislocate such frames and advance ‘self-transparency and self-reform’ (Turner, 2015: 472). But here we may expect to encounter a problem-solving paradox that might stymie social action. This paradox stems from the insight that making it clear that a social problem is of a substantial magnitude is often necessary if problem-solvers are to be induced to mobilize, but this clarification of the magnitude of the problem may weaken the resolve and reforming capacities of potential problem solvers (Weick, 1984). Accordingly, Weick (1984: 40) proposes that serious social problems be addressed by ‘recast[ing] larger problems into smaller, less arousing problems’ and aiming to achieve small wins:

Reformulation of [serious] social issues as mere problems allows for a strategy of small wins wherein a series of concrete, complete outcomes of moderate importance build a pattern that attracts allies and deters opponents.

We applaud this perspective, but hold that perceiving the totality of a problem and understanding how its components are interconnected is essential. Depicting in brutal and dispiriting detail the institutional reality in which firms are embedded can help reveal important contradictions between key tenets of liberalism and empirical actuality. Weick (1984) suggests that focusing on the tremendous scale of a problem and aiming for big wins may not only paralyse problem-solvers, but also provoke opposition amongst conservatives by challenging the fundamental values that underpin the status quo. By contrast, we suggest that such a representation can reveal the status quo to be an affront to fundamental values. Certainly, the evidence we present does not support the claim that individualist liberal societies are consistent or principled in their application of core philosophical tenets, such as equality, inclusion and tolerance. By demonstrating the existence of such institutional contradictions scholars might induce the kind of moral shock (Voronov and Vince, 2012) that can penetrate ‘muffled ears’ (Douglas, 1992: 55–82) and precipitate the disruption of institutional arrangements. If receptiveness to change can indeed be thus invoked, this alone would constitute a significant win, because responding to the problem of workforce integration would then become more of a technical matter, not one of moral suasion (Douglas and Wildavsky, 1982).

Having thus shifted the problem, pragmatic insights into actionable strategies are required, and it is here where Weick’s (1984) small wins strategy is valuable. Accordingly, in Table 1, below, we draw on Scott’s (2014) three pillars model to break down our earlier, discursive depiction of the workforce integration problem into its constituent elements. This yields a model that simultaneously reveals the totality of the workforce integration problem while presenting its elements as a collection of smaller, more approachable problems.

Table 1.

Approachable problems within individualist liberal societies that discourage firms from behaving integratively towards former prisoners

	Regulative	Normative	Cultural-Cognitive
Basis of compliance	Expedience • Exclusion of former prisoners from mainstream market and exploitation of former offenders in spot market perceived as simpler, safer and better for business. • Perceived transaction costs associated with hiring former prisoners in mainstream labour market prohibitively high.	Social obligation • Widely shared notions of unworthiness of former prisoners and principle of lesser eligibility dictate exclusion of former prisoners from good jobs. • By contrast, providing former prisoners with low-grade, punitive jobs as a second chance satisfies the ideal of personal responsibility and allows continued belief in the possibility of ‘making good’ ( Maruna, 2001 ).	Taken-for-grantedness Shared understanding • Discrimination against former offenders understood by broader society as rational and reasonable. • Absence among employers of justificatory scripts defending discrimination.
Basis of order	Regulative rules • See Indicators below for details of regulative regime affecting the job prospects of former offenders, and also constituting the legal environment of firms.	Binding expectations • Employers assume reputational damage will ensue if they award former prisoners decent positions.	Constitutive schema • ‘Shared role definitions and expectations’ ( Scott, 2014 ) of formerly incarcerated people; templated understanding of former prisoners as untrustworthy, unreformable, undeserving, unreliable, a serious threat, unskilled, poor quality employees, and generally undesirable.
Mechanisms	Coercive • Mandated criminal background checks for range of roles and professions; barring of former offenders from many roles and professions. • Where discretion lies with the employer, the threat of litigation through negligent hiring suits impels employers to reject former offenders. • Courts support employer discrimination against former offenders.	Normative • Absence of moral pressure to reverse the labour market discrimination against former prisoners, as evidenced by companies’ unashamed total exclusion of former offenders. • Criminal history checking behaviour ‘infused with value’ ( Selznick, 1957 : 17).	Mimetic • Media and popular culture perpetuate stereotyping of former prisoners. • Evidence of objectification of shared beliefs.
Logic	Instrumentality • Wage penalty imposed on former prisoners makes it materially beneficial for low-road firms whose profitability depends upon lowering labour costs to draw on the former prisoner labour pool. • Hiring and investing in former prisoners for skilled, long-term roles seen as risky and incongruous with firms’ material goals.	Appropriateness • Principle of lesser eligibility forbids access to primary labour market. • By contrast, the community sanctions consignment of former prisoners to the secondary or spot labour market.	Orthodoxy • Illustrated by its inverse: the unorthodoxy of providing former prisoners with good job opportunities. • Normalcy of conducting criminal records checks – it has become standard procedure.
Indicators	Rules	Certification	Common beliefs
	Laws	Accreditation	Shared logics of action
	Sanctions • Criminal records checking regimes. • Federal and state legislation restricts eligibility of former offenders for employment in a range of professions and roles; often, nexus between the offence committed and the role to be performed does not need to be established. • Negligent hiring suits award both compensatory and punitive costs against employers. • Civil disabilities are imposed upon former offenders; the resulting disenfranchisement renders them vulnerable to exploitation.	• Occupational licensing restrictions and professional standards prevent admission to both white collar and blue collar professions and occupations, based on doubts regarding applicants’ good moral character.	Isomorphism • Similarities or homogeneities across the types of employers who hire former offenders.
Affect	Fear Guilt / Innocence • Fear of legal reprisal arising from a failure of duty of care and potential negligent hiring suits.	Shame / Honor • Irrecoverable stigma permanently locks many former prisoners out of mainstream labour market. • This stigma is mirrored in the visceral reactions (repugnance, anger, fear) of employers, which drive their hiring behaviour. • Employers are concerned with potential reputational damage associated with hiring former prisoners.	Certainty / Confusion • Certainty, sense of security and relief from anxiety gained by avoiding perceived risks associated with hiring former prisoners, hence many organisations have policy (informal or otherwise) of blanket exclusion of former prisoners.
Basis of legitimacy	Legally sanctioned • Extensive legal system enforcing and/or supporting exclusion of former prisoners from mainstream labour market.	Morally governed • Employers’ personal moral hierarchies govern treatment of candidates with a criminal history. • Providing good jobs to former prisoners jeopardises organisations’ legitimacy.	Comprehensible Recognizable Culturally supported • Running the gauntlet of the contingent, secondary labour market is the culturally supported means by which former prisoners may ‘make good’ ( Maruna, 2001 ).

Source notes: Three pillars framework (all bolded items) derived from Scott (2014: 60), Institutions and Organizations: Ideas, Interests, and Identities.

Concept of approachable problems drawn from Weick (1984).

As our argumentation is largely based on the US, we acknowledge that the model we present identifies the institutional elements that the cosmology of liberalism is capable of fostering, but does not identify what Garland (2001: vii) calls the ‘empirical particulars’ of a specific local context. Empirical, conditionalized research is needed to specify such particulars, and we suggest that the model may be drawn on to guide this form of research and diagnosis. We also appreciate that the elements within the model must be obverted if they are to be transformed from approachable problems into actions that might encourage integrative behaviour – that is if these elements are to be transformed from barriers to integrative behaviour into potential small wins that can be pursued by change agents. As management and organisation scholars, we possess neither the theoretical wherewithal nor the policy and industry networks to bridge the ‘theory-practice gap’ (Van de Ven, 2007: 2) and produce practical knowledge that can address this full suite of problems. No single discipline boasts such capacity. Meaningful reform requires inter-disciplinary, cross-sector engagement and the involvement of actors who, collectively and cumulatively, have the expertise and networks to tackle the three pillars of the social institutions that discourage firms from behaving integratively. What we provide is a model that might be drawn on to help map, network and coordinate the interdisciplinary efforts of scholars, policy makers and practitioners who wish to better understand and countermand the institutional elements within these pillars.

To this end, we proffer and justify the cautious optimism promised at the outset of our article. Mills (2012) provides us with the crucial philosophical grounds that renders such optimism theoretically feasible, by arguing that it would be a mistake to believe the principles of liberalism to be immanently flawed, despite those principles being conceived, advanced, and applied by white elites in the interests of white elites. The core of the problem with liberalism, Mills (2008: 1386) suggests, is the motivated failure of the beneficiaries of the historical application of this doctrine to recognise that liberalism in practice has been founded on a ‘domination contract’ that continues to be sustained. In short, liberalism may be deracialised by being honest about the past (Mills, 2008) and surfacing in an ongoing way what Turner (2015: 472) describes as the ‘[deep] habits of evasion and unacknowledged problems of recognition within the liberal life-world’.

Thus, Mills’ (2008, 2012) agenda is quite consistent with those of critical criminology scholars, such as Hallett (2012: 222), who cautions that an uncritical ‘“jobs agenda” … may not result in transformational opportunities for ex-offenders, but simply perpetuate and reinforce preexisting patterns’. But, equally, we would suggest, if critique is to translate into actionable intervention, the institutional reality in which firms are embedded must be accorded due respect, as Jacobs’ (2015) pragmatic body of work cautions. Similarly, Mills (2012: 337) also points to the need for pragmatism, stating that ‘[r]adicals need to begin where people’s heads are and then try to move them further left’.

The proposition that we articulated at the outset of our article implied that integrative behaviour towards former prisoners can be encouraged by institutionally constraining the elites who enjoy the benefits of a system established both in their image and for their advantage. We suggested that the difficulty of constraining such actors will be correlative with the extent to which a society has institutionalised an idealised (as distinct from nonidealised – i.e. clear-eyed and sober) version of liberalism (Mills, 2008). Nevertheless, we see opportunities for the knowledge produced by critical and re-entry scholars to work in concert to ameliorate even the most ascetic conception of this doctrine.

The small wins model presented above reveals the many institutional elements that might be targeted for intervention. Organisational neoinstitutionalism provides some useful clues as to how these interventions might be orchestrated. In this regard, and in line with pragmatic re-entry scholars (e.g. Jacobs, 2015; Solomon, 2015), alleviating some of the more gratuitous regulative pressures and reducing legal ambiguity (Lageson et al., 2015) is likely to be both ideologically acceptable to individualist liberal societies and anxiety-relieving. Wage subsidies, tax credits and free insurance may also have a role to play in altering the logic of instrumentality that currently inhibits integrative behaviour. Such initiatives have been said to have been greeted by employers with little enthusiasm (Western, 2007: 351), but we suspect that this may be due to the neglect of the cultural-cognitive elements of the institutional order – ‘the deeper foundations of institutional forms … [and] the infrastructure on which not only beliefs, but norms and rules rest’ (Scott, 2008: 429). Thus, to echo the essence of Hallett’s (2012) argument, re-entry scholars and practitioners must be supported by practical interventions that denaturalise employers from the institutional order, while simultaneously showing employers that former prisoners rightfully belong in that order and have a central role to play in its transformation. Expressed differently, the more effective approach in the long run may be to resist the temptation to violate the voluntarism of employers, and to instead endeavour to change the very nature of their voluntaristic impulses. In this way might integrative behaviour eventually become internalised. We believe the kind of interventions of which Hallett (2012), Bushway and Apel (2012) and Maruna (2011) write hold both practical and theoretical promise in this respect. For, combining the efforts of interventions such as signalling theory (e.g. Bushway and Apel, 2012), reintegration rituals (Maruna, 2011), and the documentation of former prisoners’ lived experiences ‘as they negotiate the “neoliberal penality” of employment markets’ (Hallett, 2012: 222) might disturb the taken-for-granted beliefs of members of the moral mainstream and encourage discomfort and disinvestment in the current order (Voronov and Vince, 2012).

Conclusion

We have critiqued the philosophy of liberalism and drawn on organisational neoinstitutionalism to illustrate how an especially idealised and individualist variety of liberalism shapes employers’ behaviour towards former prisoners. Thus, we have traced the scarcity of integrative firms and the immiseration of former prisoners, especially the subaltern fractions of this population, to the logics of liberalism. Lest this social problem appear so immense as to be impossible to address, we have united this critique with Weick’s (1984) small wins approach to problem-solving. This has entailed using Scott’s (2014) three pillars model of institutions to conceptually fragment the reality in which firms are embedded into smaller, approachable components that have ‘an immediacy, tangibility and controllability’ (Weick, 1984: 41) that ought to inspire in problem solvers both hope and action.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

We pay tribute to our colleague, Jan Schapper, who sadly passed away on 24 September, 2014, and who we know would have been proud to see this piece of work come to fruition. We would also like to thank our two anonymous reviewers who provided constructive feedback that was instrumental to the strengthening of our work, and Matthew J Willis, Adjunct University Fellow, the Northern Institute, Charles Darwin University, for his thoughtful and very helpful comments on an earlier draft of this article.

Prue Burns is a Research Fellow in Monash Business School, Monash University. She has previously worked in the NGO and Government sectors, which has led to an interest in theoretically-grounded research that can be applied in practice. The theme that unites her research interests is understanding how institutional change may be provoked and harnessed for the social good.

Chris Nyland is a Professor of Management at Monash University in Melbourne Australia. His research centres on the evolution of ideas in management and organization studies, education policy, and on criminality associated with international education markets.

Richard Cooney works at Monash University in the Department of Management, Faculty of Business & Economics. Richard's research examines the development of occupational skills, employee safety and well-being and organizational innovation and improvement. Richard is currently engaged in research projects leading to the development of a model of work integration for those experiencing long periods of absence from the workplace.

Jan Schapper was a Senior Lecturer at La Trobe University in Melbourne Australia. Deeply immersed in feminist, Marxist and psychoanalytic studies, Jan's scholarly interests embraced higher education, business ethics and corporate social responsibility, and equality and diversity in the workplace.

References

Arblaster

(1984) The Rise and Decline of Western Liberalism, Oxford: Basil Blackwell Ltd.

Berger

Kellner

(1973) The Homeless Mind: Modernization and Consciousness, New York: Random House.

Berger

Luckmann

(1966/1991) The Social Construction of Reality, London: Penguin Books.

Braithwaite

(1989) Crime, Shame and Reintegration, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Brown

(2005) Liberal exclusions and the new punitiveness. In: Pratt

Brown

et al. (eds) The New Punitiveness: Trends, Theories, Perspectives, Devon: Willan Publishing, pp. 272–289.

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.

Bushway

Apel

(2012) A signalling perspective on employment-based reentry programming: Training completion as a desistance signal. Criminology & Public Policy 11(1): 21–50.

Crutchfield

(2014) Get a Job: Labor Markets, Economic Opportunity, and Crime, New York and London: New York University Press.

Decker

Spohn

Ortiz

et 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.

Delgado

(2012) Prisoner Reentry at Work: Adding Business to the Mix, Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers.

11.

Douglas

(1986) How Institutions Think, Syracuse: Syracuse University Press.

12.

Douglas

(1992) Risk and Blame: Essays in Cultural Theory, NY: Routledge.

13.

Douglas

Wildavsky

(1982) Risk and Culture: An Essay on the Selection of Technical and Environmental Dangers, California: University of California Press.

14.

Fletcher

(2003) Employers, recruitment and offenders: Underlining the limits of work-focused welfare? Policy & Politics 31(4): 497–510.

15.

Garland

(2001) The Culture of Control: Crime and Social Order in Contemporary Society, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

16.

Geiger

(2006) The case for treating ex-offenders as a suspect class. California Law Review 94: 1191–1242.

17.

Gill

(1997) Employing ex-offenders: A risk or an opportunity? The Howard Journal 36(4): 337–351.

18.

Goffman

(1963) Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity, Harmondsworth: Penguin Books Ltd.

19.

Hall

Soskice

(2001) Varieties of Capitalism: The Institutional Foundations of Comparative Advantage, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

20.

Hallett

(2012) Reentry to what? Theorising prisoner reentry in the jobless future. Critical Criminology 20: 213–228.

21.

Hanneken

(2013) Between the exceptional individual and the exception: Scandals of self-ownership. Homo Oeconomicus 30(3): 349–368.

22.

Harris

Keller

(2005) Ex-offenders need not apply. Journal of Contemporary Criminal Justice 21(1): 6–30.

23.

Harrison

Schehr

(2004) Offenders and post-release jobs. Journal of Offender Rehabilitation 39(3): 35–68.

24.

Heydon

(2012) Risk and rehabilitation in criminal records checking by employers: What employers are doing and why? Employment Law Bulletin 18(8): 129–135.

25.

Hirschfield

Piquero

(2010) Normalization and legitimation: Modeling stigmatizing attitudes toward ex-offenders. Criminology 48(1): 27–55.

26.

Hiskes

(1982) Community Without Coercion: Getting Along in the Minimal State, Newark: University of Delaware Press.

27.

Holzer

Raphael

Stoll

(2007) The effect of an applicant’s criminal history on employer hiring decisions and screening practices: Evidence from Los Angeles. In: Bushway

Stoll

Weiman

(eds) Barriers to Reentry? The Labor Market for Released Prisoners in Post-Industrial America, New York, NY: Russell Sage Foundation, pp. 117–150.

28.

Horton

(2005) Race and the Making of American Liberalism, New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

29.

Jacobs

(2015) The Eternal Criminal Record, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

30.

Jepperson

Meyer

(1991) The public order and the construction of formal organizations. In: Powell

DiMaggio

(eds) The New Institutionalism in Organizational Analysis, Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, pp. 204–231.

31.

Lacey

(2008) The Prisoners’ Dilemma: Political Economy and Punishment in Contemporary Democracies, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

32.

Lageson

Vuolo

Uggen

(2015) Legal ambiguity in managerial assessments of criminal records. Law & Social Inquiry 40(1): 175–204.

33.

Lam

Harcourt

(2003) The use of criminal record [sic] in employment decisions: The rights of ex-offenders, employers and the public. Journal of Business Ethics 47: 237–252.

34.

Lavelle

(2008) The Death of Social Democracy: Political Consequences in the 21st Century, Hampshire: Ashgate Publishing Ltd.

35.

Lutz

(2015) No one is minding the store: MacIntyre’s critique of modern liberal individualism. Perspectives on Political Science 44(2): 115–121.

36.

MacIntyre

(1988) Whose Justice? Which Rationality?, Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press.

37.

Maruna

(2001) Making Good: How Ex-Convicts Reform and Rebuild Their Lives, Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.

38.

Maruna

(2011) Judicial rehabilitation and the ‘Clean bill of Health’ in criminal justice. European Journal of Probation 3(1): 97–117.

39.

Meyer

Rowan

(1977) Institutionalized organizations: Formal structure as myth and ceremony. American Journal of Sociology 83(2): 340–363.

40.

Mills

(2008) Racial liberalism. PMLA 123(5): 1380–1397.

41.

Mills

(2012) Occupy liberalism! Or, ten reasons why liberalism cannot be retrieved for radicalism (and why they’re all wrong). Radical Philosophy Review 15(2): 305–323.

42.

Naylor

Paterson

Pittard

(2008) In the shadow of a criminal record: Proposing a just model of criminal record employment checks. Melbourne University Law Review 32: 171–198.

43.

Pager

(2003) The mark of a criminal record. American Journal of Sociology 108(5): 937–975.

44.

Pager

(2007) Two strikes and you’re out: The intensification of racial and criminal stigma. In: Bushway

Stoll

Weiman

(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.

Pager

(2009) Marked: Race, Crime, and Finding Work in an Era of Mass Incarceration, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

46.

Pager

Quillian

(2005) Walking the talk? What employers say versus what they do. American Sociological Review 70(3): 355–380.

47.

Parker

(2002) Coordination and competition in small business policy: A comparative analysis of Australia and Denmark. Journal of Economic Issues XXXVI(4): 935–952.

48.

Peck

Theodore

(2008) Carceral Chicago: Making the ex-offender employability crisis. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 32(2): 251–281.

49.

Sandel

(1998) Liberalism and the Limits of Justice, 2nd ed. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

50.

Scott

(2008) Approaching adulthood: the maturing of institutional theory. Theory and Society 37(5): 427–442.

51.

Scott

(2014) Institutions and Organizations: Ideas, Interests, and Identities, 4th ed. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, Inc.

52.

Selznick

(1957) Leadership in Administration, New York, NY: Harper & Row.

53.

Society of Human Resource

Management

(2012) Background Checking—The Use of Criminal Background Checks in Hiring Decisions, Alexandria, VA: Society for Human Resource Management.

54.

Solomon

(2015) In search of a job: Criminal records as barriers to employment. Journal of Current Issues in Crime, Law, and Law Enforcement 8(1): 151–163.

55.

Streeck

(1997) Beneficial constraints: On the economic limits of rational voluntarism. In: Rogers Hollingsworth

Boyer

(eds) Contemporary Capitalism: The Embeddedness of Institutions, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 197–219.

56.

Turner

(2015) Reconstructing liberalism: Carles Mills’ unfinished project. Politics, Groups, and Identities 3(3): 471–487.

57.

Uggen

(1999) Ex-offenders and the conformist alternative: A job quality model of work and crime. Social Problems 46(1): 127–151.

58.

Uggen

Vuolo

Lageson

et al. (2014) The edge of stigma: An experimental audit of the effects of low-level criminal records on employment. Criminology 52(4): 627–654.

59.

Van de Ven

(2007) Engaged Scholarship: A Guide for Organizational and Social Research, New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

60.

Voronov

Vince

(2012) Integrating emotions into the analysis of institutional work. Academy of Management Review 37(1): 58–81.

61.

Wacquant

(2000) The new ‘peculiar institution’: On the prison as surrogate ghetto. Theoretical Criminology 4(3): 377–389.

62.

Wacquant

(2001) Deadly symbiosis: When ghetto and prison meet and mesh. Punishment & Society 3(1): 95–134.

63.

Wacquant

(2005) Race as civic felony. International Social Science Journal 57(183): 127–142.

64.

Wacquant

(2007) Territorial stigmatization in the age of advanced marginality. Thesis Eleven 91: 66–77.

65.

Weick

(1984) Small wins: Redefining the scale of social problems. American Psychologist 39(1): 40–49.

66.

Weiman

Stoll

Bushway

(2007) The regime of mass incarceration: A labor-market perspective. In: Bushway

Stoll

Weiman

(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.

Western

(2007) The penal system and the labor market. In: Bushway

Stoll

Weiman

(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.

Young

(1999) The Exclusive Society, London: Sage Publications Ltd.