Posted on June 25, 2026 in Featured Reviews
Authors:
P. J. VerrecchiaAs part of our efforts to support scholarly work in pursuit of racial justice, Choice regularly reviews important current titles that consider issues of race or racism, devoting additional space to these works through long-form reviews. Doing so, we hope to underscore the urgency of these issues and to highlight promising resources. Given the relevance of this endeavor to TIE‘s mission, we have decided to begin publishing these reviews exclusively under Toward Inclusive Excellence, moving them from the Choice Picks section of Choice360.org. We hope our readers find these reviews useful for developing their personal or institutional collections. The following review considers the book The Criminal Record Complex (2025) by Melissa Burch and appears in the September 2026 issue of Choice.
In 2004, a group in California called All of Us or None of Us sought to eliminate the checkbox on employment applications that asks whether job candidates have prior convictions, launching the “Ban the Box” movement. The group was concerned about discriminatory practices in employment and housing (a similar box exists on rental agreements) against people who were trying to reintegrate into society after being incarcerated. Some see this box as unnecessary, since employers conduct background checks on prospective employees, thus possibly eliminating someone before they have been given a fair chance. The traditional thinking is that employers do not want to risk a “bad hire,” so they make a quick decision too early in the hiring process (p. 62). However, Burch (anthropology, Univ. of Michigan), who serves as the director of the Afterlives of Conviction Project, argues that the situation is more complicated than that. Hiring decisions, she asserts, “have less to do with employers’ personal attitudes or beliefs, and more to do with the contexts in which they make hiring decisions” (p. 5).
The term “criminal record complex” is a clear reference to former President Dwight Eisenhower’s farewell address to the nation in 1961, in which he warned of the dangers of the “military industrial complex”: the symbiotic relationship among America’s government, military, and defense industry, including companies like Lockheed Martin and Northrup Grumman, which manufacture and sell weapons. Eisenhower cautioned that the “immense military establishment and … large arms industry” would use security needs to drive up defense spending, earning defense companies large profits and keeping the country entangled in foreign wars. In a similar vein, Burch uses the notion of a “complex” to pinpoint the “set of public and private interests that encourage the exclusion of people with criminal records in the name of protecting businesses and organizations against risk” (p. 5).
However, in actuality, [these interests] are contributing to ‘one of the most important contemporary processes exacerbating inequalities along lines of class, race, and gender in the United States’
p. 8
As Burch contends, the criminal record complex, like the military-industrial complex, also encompasses a symbiotic relationship among state institutions (police, government agencies, regulatory boards), risk industries (insurance companies, background screeners), and fields of expertise (human resource managers, employment lawyers, workplace security). Her analysis therefore focuses on these broader entities instead of solely on the individuals discriminating, like business owners and hiring managers. Due to the “intense climate of blame and litigiousness” in American society, the interests upholding the criminal record complex claim to be protecting average people from being harmed and businesses from being sued by those who are hurt (p. 17). However, in actuality, they are contributing to “one of the most important contemporary processes exacerbating inequalities along lines of class, race, and gender in the United States” (p. 8).
Burch conducted observer/participant research at the Hub, an organization in California that has been helping job seekers with felony convictions since the 1970s, observing the day-to-day activities of the Hub’s staff and clients. At times, she helped the job seekers with their resumes, interviewing techniques, and computer skills. Burch also traveled to one company that hires people with felony convictions and interviewed, among others, the company’s owner. She even attended employment law conferences. Throughout this ethnography, Burch also weaves in national employment statistics and relevant court cases to paint a more complete picture of the issue at hand.
The Criminal Record Complex is a well-researched, impassioned look at a serious societal issue, supported by copious notes; however, it lacks a certain degree of objectivity. Of course, people who have paid their debt to society deserve a second chance, but the book overlooks one very important group of people affected: the victims of the formerly incarcerated. Acknowledging them would have been a nice touch.
Summing Up: Recommended. Advanced undergraduates through faculty; professionals.
Interdisciplinary Subjects: Racial Justice, Law & Society
Subject: Social & Behavioral Sciences – Anthropology
P. J. Verrecchia is Professor of Criminology and Criminal Justice at York College of Pennsylvania, where he has taught courses on Ethical Issues in Criminal Justice, Examining Terrorism, Juvenile Justice, and Criminal Justice Statistics
 | Leslie T. Grover’s review of We Do This ‘Til We Free Us (2021): “Honoring Community without Penalizing Blackness: An Essential Primer on Prison Abolition“ |
 | Meredith Roman’s review of Border and Rule (2021): “Conceptualizing Humane Immigration: Recognizing Borders as Violent Tools of Racial Ordering“ |
 | Kevin Anderson’s review of Becoming Abolitionists (2021): “More than a Slogan: Derecka Purnell Champions Meaningful Commitment to Abolition and Social Justice“ |
Header image is a detail of This is Harlem by Jacob Lawrence. Courtesy of Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden. © 2021 The Jacob and Gwendolyn Knight Lawrence Foundation, Seattle / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. For more information, click here.
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