‘Relevant Matching’ and the Use of Criminal Records by Employers

In Ethics and Situational Crime Prevention, Thomas Søbirk Petersen defends the use by potential employers of criminal records in making hiring decisions if there is a ‘relevant match’ between the prior criminal conduct and the job at issue. This essay assesses Petersen’s ‘Relevant Matching’ principle of criminal record accessibility. I contend that his account, which employs a broadly utilitarian framework, would be usefully supplemented by an account of the presumptive right offenders earn, by serving a term of punishment, to be restored to full legal standing in the political community. Appeal to such a right can help to explain why, even on Petersen’s own account, the permissibility of using criminal records in hiring is not solely a matter of expected utility calculus. If we take seriously this notion of a presumptive right to be restored to full legal standing, however, we also find that Petersen’s responses to one of the objections he considers are insufficient, as the objection is not best understood, and not best answered, in purely utilitarian terms. Thus, although I agree with much of Petersen’s account of criminal records accessibility, in particular that it is sometimes justifiable for employers to gain access to relevant information about applicants’ criminal histories, and that considerations of risk reduction are salient in explaining why this is so, I also maintain that his account would be strengthened if it incorporated an account of the presumptive right to full legal standing that a person earns by completing a term of punishment.