"This book is a stellar exploration of the racialized geographies of criminalization, employment, and social reproduction that take shape in the shadow of the prison. Richly driven by the insights and experiences of her interlocutors as they interpret, navigate, reproduce, and resist the criminal record complex, Burch's account delivers crisp and methodical analyses that reveal the multi-scalar social forces that create and sustain it."-- Judah Schept, author of Coal, Cages, Crisis: The Rise of the Prison Economy in Central Appalachia "Melissa Burch shows in brilliant detail how criminalization distorts people's ability to participate in the workforce. Structural impediments result from the ongoing interactions of racism, risk management, record-keeping, and carceral logic. But, thinking as an organizer as well as a researcher, Burch highlights the dynamic possibilities of tireless campaigning and surprising solidarities. Both abolition-curious and abolition-committed people must read this beautifully written book. We can use its insights to build broad and strong movement toward real emancipation."-- Ruth Wilson Gilmore, author of Abolition Geography and Golden Gulag: Prisons, Surplus, Crisis, and Opposition in Globalizing California "In this profound book, Melissa Burch unearths the quiet machinery that turns a criminal record into a life sentence of exclusion.

The Criminal Record Complex doesn't just explain the policies--it reveals the heartbreak, the daily humiliations, and the structural betrayals that follow people long after their release. This is a work of deep witnessing, and Burch writes with the moral clarity of someone who refuses to look away. It's a necessary, haunting, and beautifully rendered call to justice."-- Laurence Ralph, author of Sito: An American Teenager and the City that Failed Him "Today we take it for granted that background checks are a necessary part of the hiring process. But Burch shows how the idea that employers should know potential employees' conviction history took hold, and how it persists in spite of little evidence that such histories have any relation to one's ability to do the job at hand. This highly significant and original scholarly contribution shows how background-check requirements erode labor conditions for all workers and even ultimately hurt employers."-- Noah Tamarkin, Cornell University.