What It Means to 'Ban the Box' Some readers misunderstood my blog post yesterday on Target "banning the box." Ban the box laws do not "require" employers to hire people with criminal convictions. Nor do they forbid employers from doing background checks. The laws merely put off the criminal history question, from the application-stage until later in the hiring process: until, say, the person has been deemed otherwise qualified for the job. Moreover, people with criminal convictions are typically barred by statute from law enforcement jobs and from other sensitive positions. This does not change under ban the box laws. What changes is that job applicants get the opportunity to prove their qualifications - and to then explain their convictions. Should a person be barred from work forever for a minor marijuana conviction or another petty crime that is decades old? Or if, as one sage commenter suggested, the job applicant was caught up in a fistfight in a bar where cops charged everyone, whether or not they were involved? Most fair minded people would say no. Arrests can remain in the record forever. But many of them never lead to conviction - meaning that the person lives under a cloud but was never found guilty of anything. And let's not forget the fact that criminal background checks frequently contain mistakes.