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In an effort to force employers to change, 26 state and 150 municipal legislatures have adopted “ban the box” legislation that removes declarations of criminal history from job-application forms.
為了設法迫使雇主做出改變，26個州和150個市的立法機構通過了一項立法，把犯罪記錄聲明的復選框從工作申請表中移除。
On April 1st an executive order by Barack Obama's administration came into effect, banning the box for all federal jobs, amounting to 250,000 jobs a year.
4月1日，奧巴馬政府出臺的行政命令生效，為所有聯邦崗位取消這個復選框，總數為一年二十五萬個工作崗位。
Banning the box may, however, have unfortunate consequences.
然而，這項舉措或許也造成了一些不盡如人意的后果。
Two American academics, Amanda Agan and Sonja Starr, have studied the effect of bans in New Jersey and New York.
Amanda Agan 和 Sonja Star兩位美國學者研究了禁令在新澤西和紐約的效果。
They created dummy job applicants with typically black names like Jermaine and Malcolm, and tracked how employers responded to those beside dummy applicants with typically white names, such as Cody and Scott.
他們用典型的黑人名字比如Jermaine和Malcolm創造了虛擬的工作申請，對比用典型白人名字比如Cody和Scott制作的工作申請，然后追蹤雇主的反應。
They found that whereas black men with invented criminal histories received more responses from companies after the change in the law, black men without criminal histories received fewer.
他們發現，自從法律規定改變之后，擁有犯罪記錄的黑人反而比沒有犯罪記錄的黑人得到更多公司的關注。
Presumably, some employers began to interpret black-sounding names as a signal of criminality.
大概是一些雇主開始把疑似的黑人名字解讀為犯罪的信號。
Two things might, however, persuade employers to change their minds.
但是或許有兩件事情能迫使雇主們改變想法。
First, negligent-hiring lawsuits—in which a firm is sued for employing someone who commits a crime at work—are terrifying but rare.
第一，雇傭過失訴訟——公司因為雇傭在工作中犯罪的人而遭到訴訟——雖然后果嚴重但其實很少出現。
Second, it is just possible that former convicts might be more productive than the other candidates who apply for a particular job.
其次，有前科的人可能在申請某些特定的工作時比其他候選人更具有競爭力。
Devah Pager, a sociologist at Harvard University, has tracked the performance of 8,000 formerfelons who entered the American army after passing a screening process in the years between 2002 and 2009.
哈佛大學的社會學家Devah Pager追蹤調查了8000位重罪犯，他們在2002年到2009年間通過篩選程序進入了美國軍隊。
She finds that the ex-cons were slightly more likely to be undisciplined but were also promoted unusually quickly.
她發現有前科的人雖然都稍微較不守紀律，但是他們晉升速度卻快得出奇。
Is that just a quirk of military culture?
難道這只是軍隊文化造成的怪相嗎？
It would be worth finding out.
這非常值得探尋。
譯文來源考研英語時事閱讀
