Former juvenile offenders have hard time landing a job

Secondary school graduates who admit to delinquency in their past when applying for jobs see their chances of success sharply diminished, according to research from the Ghent University.

Economists Stijn Baert and Elsy Verhofstadt sent out nearly 1,000 fictional letters of application for existing vacancies with Flemish employers between December 2012 and April 2013. For each vacancy they sent two letters – one that openly referred to a period spend in youth detention, and the other that did not but was otherwise identical.

Candidates who said nothing had 17.5% positive reactions; delinquent candidates only had a 13.6% response rate – either a request for further information or an invitation to an interview.

The distinction, the researchers reported, was more pronounced in the case of male employers and in the case of applicants with lower educational achievements. Delinquent candidates had 58% less chance of a response from a male employer representative than their counterparts without a detention history.

According to international research, the paper said, unemployment problems for former delinquents have lasting consequences for society. Unemployment is an important factor in determining whether a former offender returns to crime, and short-term unemployment tends to breed long-term unemployment: After a certain amount of time, the chances of finding a job greatly decline.

Discrimination against former youth detainees, however, is not grounds for legal action under Belgian law.