An enquiry into criminal record holders’ lived experiences of gaining and maintaining employment.

Criminal record holders occupy one of the most marginalised positions within the labour market. There is evidence to suggest this marginalisation stems from a combination of disproportionally low levels of education and work experience, and the impact of employer discrimination. Criminal record disclosure, on the other hand, has received relatively little academic attention in relation to the labour market experience of criminal record holders. There exists a paucity of research into the impacts of criminal record disclosure, most of which is from the perspective of employers, overlooking the experiences of criminal record holders. On that basis, this thesis seeks to address this gap by giving ‘voice’ to an otherwise marginalised population. Utilising a phenomenological approach, qualitative accounts of 23 criminal record holding participants were collected. My contributions are threefold; conceptual, theoretical and methodological. First, I provide an alternative way of thinking about how disclosure creates barriers to employment. The specific act of disclosure does not need to be present to impact how criminal record holders experience the labour market – the prospect of it is enough to cause self-discipline and self-marginalisation. Second, disclosure has significant life-impacts that extend beyond the context of the labour market. The emotional, economic and social impacts of disclosure work as a cyclical process to decay feelings of hope and attachment to the labour market. Finally, I contribute a contemporary study of disclosure, conducted in the UK, that adds to a field largely dominated by overseas research. By giving ‘voice’ to criminal record holders, rather than adopting a paternalistic approach, we can begin to understand the complexity of living with disclosure. These contributions provide a legitimate basis to question the current disclosure system and how it is perceived to impact or inhibit desistance from crime.