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Abstract:Although men's incarceration rates have declined in the United States, women's have stayed steady and even risen in some areas. At the same time, courts have increased their use of monetary sanctions, especially for low-level offenses. We propose that women's incarceration trends can be partially explained by county dependence on monetary sanctions as a source of revenue. We suggest that monetary sanctions expose female defendants to processes that increase their likelihood of incarceration, especially in counties more reliant on monetary sanctions as a source of revenue, and where women's poverty rates are high. Using data from Washington State, we find county dependence on monetary sanctions is positively associated with rates of women sentenced to incarceration. Although rural counties' rates are higher, they depend on monetary sanctions no more than nonrural counties do.

Although recent scholarship has enumerated many individual-level consequences of criminal legal citations and sentences involving fines and fees, we know surprisingly little about the structural consequences of monetary sanctions or legal financial obligations (LFOs). We use social disorganization and critical race theories to examine neighborhood-level associations between and among LFO sentence amounts, poverty, and racial and ethnic demographics. Using longitudinal data from the Washington State Administrative Office of the Courts, and the American Community Survey, we find LFOs are more burdensome in high-poverty communities and of color, and that per-capita rates of LFOs sentenced are associated with increased future poverty rates across all neighborhoods.