1/ Can a Google search hurt your chances of getting a job more than a background check? A new study with Sarah Lageson on criminal records, race, and willingness to hire has surprising answers. 🧵

Most people would be shocked by how much personal data is available on these "people search" sites. For a small fee, they readily provide info such as home addresses, phone numbers, social media profiles, property records, voting records, family info, and (often inaccurate) criminal history records.

Recruiting interviewees for qualitative studies increasingly occurs online - which expands the participant pool but adds new challenges. We detail our experience in this new, open access, Qual Crim article. www.qualitativecriminology.com/pub/80nu44mw...

📆 Add this to your April plans 👇 bit.ly/Kenneth_Hart... @nusl.bsky.social's Center for Law, Equity and Race will host Kenneth Hartman, award-winning writer and prison reform activist, sentenced to life without parole aged 19. He served more than 37 years in prison before his sentence was commuted.

My newest article, "Chasing a Clean Slate: The Shifting Roles of Privacy and Technology in Criminal Record Expungement Law and Policy," with Alessandro Corda, is now available at Harvard Journal of Law & Technology: jolt.law.harvard.edu/volumes/volu...

Check out @jotwell.bsky.social’s review of the Law & Society Review article “Surveillance Deputies: When Ordinary People Surveil for the State”! bit.ly/JotwellLSR @sarahbrayne.bsky.social @sarahlageson.bsky.social @karenlevy.bsky.social @ariezra.bsky.social

This piece by @robertstewart.io and @sarahlageson.bsky.social highlights how (among other things) the digitization of municipal records - public data - has been monetized by informal background check companies, which facilitate easy discrimination in lending, housing, etc.

Background checks are ubiquitous, and most generally assume they're faithful representations of a person’s criminal history. But are they? In a new paper in Criminology, “The Problem with Criminal Records," @sarahlageson.bsky.social and I check that out. onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

Looking forward to my first time back at #ASA2023 since the pandemic. Want to hear about criminal background checks? Stop by the Crim panel at 2pm Sunday to hear how this figure exemplifies "The Problem with Criminal Records" (w/ @sarahlageson.bsky.social). Fun will be had by all!