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In this dissertation, I examine the history of the driver’s license in California – drawing on legal and transportation history literature to better understand how licensing policies promoted automobility but also left behind certain drivers. Over the course of the twentieth century, adults increasingly needed to drive. The more essential a driver’s license was for daily life, the more effective the threat of its suspension. In a series of consequential court decisions in the late 1920s and early 1930s, California courts increasingly held that driving was not a fundamental right but a privilege. Progressively, driver’s license suspensions became a generic government enforcement technique; California and most other states continue to use suspensions to enforce a wide range of statutes, and violations that trigger them can be found in various government code sections. Policymakers use license suspensions as leverage for social control and as a tool to generate revenue, such as enforcing child support payments and coercing drivers to pay outstanding fines and fees. From the beginning the driver’s license was a regulatory tool that allowed most drivers to travel relatively undisturbed. Minority drivers, however, were most likely to be stopped by law enforcement and punished in the courts and, therefore, to feel the sting of a suspension and the additional criminal and monetary penalties of getting caught driving without a license. In metropolitan areas built around the automobile, and underserved by public transit modes, the consequences of being without a driver’s license are far-reaching. To redress the inequities and harmful consequences associated with driver’s license policy, it is important to first diagnose the cause and scope of the problem. In this dissertation, I provide a history of the driver’s license in California to understand both the ubiquity and eclecticism in the ways the license has been used, and how race/ethnicity and income are implicated. This st

In this dissertation, I examine the history of the driver’s license in California – drawing on legal and transportation history literature to better understand how licensing policies promoted automobility but also left behind certain drivers. Over the course of the twentieth century, adults increasingly needed to drive. The more essential a driver’s license was for daily life, the more effective the threat of its suspension. In a series of consequential court decisions in the late 1920s and early 1930s, California courts increasingly held that driving was not a fundamental right but a privilege. Progressively, driver’s license suspensions became a generic government enforcement technique; California and most other states continue to use suspensions to enforce a wide range of statutes, and violations that trigger them can be found in various government code sections. Policymakers use license suspensions as leverage for social control and as a tool to generate revenue, such as enforcing child support payments and coercing drivers to pay outstanding fines and fees. From the beginning the driver’s license was a regulatory tool that allowed most drivers to travel relatively undisturbed. Minority drivers, however, were most likely to be stopped by law enforcement and punished in the courts and, therefore, to feel the sting of a suspension and the additional criminal and monetary penalties of getting caught driving without a license. In metropolitan areas built around the automobile, and underserved by public transit modes, the consequences of being without a driver’s license are far-reaching. To redress the inequities and harmful consequences associated with driver’s license policy, it is important to first diagnose the cause and scope of the problem. In this dissertation, I provide a history of the driver’s license in California to understand both the ubiquity and eclecticism in the ways the license has been used, and how race/ethnicity and income are implicated. This st

This research aimed to identify the causes of the Low imposition of fines on the illegal trade of wild fauna in Colombia, and to identify how much of the responsibility falls on the current methodology that Colombian environmental authorities must use to calculate these fines (i.e., "Methodology for the Calculation of Fines for Infringement of the Environmental Normative"). For this purpose, a survey was applied to public officials belonging to Colombian environmental authorities. The results revealed that these entities have several reasons for not imposing fines on the illegal trade of wild fauna. The most important cause is the fact that the referred methodology does not serve the purpose of estimating fines on this illicit activity, since its variable "Degree of environmental affectation" was not designed to be calculated on fauna. This impossibility of calculating fines on the illegal trade of wild fauna has generated two types of behaviors in Colombian environmental authorities: 1) some have refrained from imposing fines on this illicit activity (thus impeding a deterrent effect); and 2) others have modified the methodology (thus breaching the principle of legality), in order to be able to the calculate the fines in the case of this illicit activity. Therefore, given that neither of these two behaviors is suitable, this research calls for the Government of Colombia to enact a new or modified methodology to calculate fines for environmental infringements that adjusts to the characteristics and environmental affectations of the illegal trade of wild fauna., Resumen Esta investigación tuvo como objetivo identificar las causas de la baja imposición de multas al tráfico ilegal de fauna silvestre en Colombia, e identificar cuánta responsabilidad tiene al respecto la actual metodología que deben usar las autoridades ambientales colombianas para calcular estas multas (i.e., "Metodología para el Cálculo de Multas por Infracción a la Normativa Ambiental"). Para este propósito, se aplicó una encuesta a servidores públicos de las autoridades ambientales colombianas. Los resultados revelaron que estas entidades tienen varias razones para no imponer multas al tráfico ilegal de fauna silvestre. La causa más importante es el hecho de que la metodología referida no sirve para estimar multas en el caso de esta actividad ilícita, ya que su variable "Grado de afectación ambiental" no fue diseñada para ser calculada en fauna. Esta imposibilidad de calcular multas por el tráfico ilegal de fauna silvestre ha provocado dos tipos de conductas en las autoridades ambientales colombianas: 1) algunas se han abstenido de imponer multas a esta actividad ilícita (impidiendo así un efecto disuasorio); y 2) otras han modificado La metodología (vulnerando así el principio de legalidad) para poder calcular las multas en el caso de esta actividad ilícita. Por consiguiente, dado que ninguna de estas dos conductas es adecuada, esta investigación insta al Gobierno de Colombia a promulgar una metodología (nueva o modificada) para el cálculo de multas por infracciones ambientales, que se ajuste a las características y afectaciones ambientales del tráfico ilegal de fauna silvestre.

Many municipal governments have come to depend heavily on fines and fees generated by the criminal justice system. This essay uses data from all courts of limited jurisdiction (municipal and district courts) in Washington State between 2000 and 2014 to evaluate the relationships between local government finances, the Great Recession, and the imposition of debt through the criminal justice system. I find that municipalities issued more criminal justice debt during and after the recession across Washington, but that government finances as measured by tax receipts and expenditures per capita were weakly related to sentencing practices. These findings suggest that macroeconomic fiscal pressures may be drivers of enforcement and prosecutorial practices through increasing case volumes, but that macroeconomic pressures and local fiscal pressures did not appear to shift court sentencing practices in Washington during the Great Recession.

Monetary sanctions include fines, fees, restitution, surcharges, interest, and other costs imposed on people who are convicted of crimes ranging from traffic violations to violent felonies. We analyze how people in the court system theorize about monetary sanctions with regards to four kinds of justice: constitutional, retributive, procedural, and distributive justice. Drawing on qualitative interviews with sixty-eight people sentenced to pay monetary sanctions in Illinois, we identify five themes that illuminate how respondents think about these forms of justice: monetary sanctions are: (1) justifiable punishment, (2) impossible to pay due to poverty, (3) double punishment, (4) extortion, and (5) collected by an opaque and greedy state. We find that for defendants in the criminal justice system, monetary sanctions serve some retributive aims, but do not align with the other three domains of justice. We discuss the policy implications of these findings.

In the years since Officer Darren Wilson shot and killed Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, policymakers and advocates have pushed for reforms to both police practices and systems of fines and fees. The connection between fines and fees enforcement tactics and police violence remains an important focus for reforms. Police play a significant role in driving up the volume and amounts of fines and fees imposed, and they play a critical role in city and state collection efforts. The use of police as debt imposers and collectors creates opportunities for police violence—both physical use of force, as well as more nuanced forms of violence through the exertion of coercion, fear, and control. In this piece, I argue that specific policing tactics used to impose and collect fines and fees, and the wide latitude given to police via Fourth Amendment jurisprudence to engage in such tactics, facilitates conditions similar to those in Ferguson and results in unnecessary and oppressive police violence. To combat this, I argue that fines and fees reforms must focus on the role of law enforcement in such systems, and how that role must be greatly limited to prevent additional violence.

Although I have provided direct services and engaged in litigation related to municipal fines & fees in New York City, monetary sanctions are not my area of legal expertise. Bearing that in mind, I am offering these thoughts in my capacity as a scholar of law, race, and money, and more importantly, as an organizer for economic justice. I hope the essay facilitates constructive conversations about the frameworks we use to analyze the political economy of monetary sanctions and mass incarceration. I am grateful to the UCLA Criminal Justice Law Review and the organizers of “Progressing Reform of Fees and Fines: Towards A Research and Policy Agenda Conference”, hosted at Harvard Law School, for the opportunity to share these reflections.

Monetary sanctions have long been a part of the U.S. criminal justice system but have received increasing attention from the public as well as legal scholars and social science research in recent years. This essay describes initial findings from the Multi-State Study of Monetary Sanctions, a multi-method study designed to build on the prior research on legal financial obligations (LFOs) by examining the multi-tiered systems of monetary sanctions operating within eight states representing key regions of the United States (California, Georgia, Illinois, Minnesota, Missouri, New York, Texas and Washington). Our research explores the constantly changing legal environment and documents how the law is practiced on the ground. We expand on prior research by engaging a large and diverse group of people who owe legal debt and criminaljustice stakeholders. We augment these data with systematic court observations across different jurisdiction sizes and court levels. In doing so, we fill important gaps in the current understanding of U.S. systems of monetary and provide findings that can be used for guiding policy.

Many municipal governments have come to depend heavily on fines and fees generated by the criminal justice system. This essay uses data from all courts of limited jurisdiction (municipal and district courts) in Washington State between 2000 and 2014 to evaluate the relationships between local government finances, the Great Recession, and the imposition of debt through the criminal justice system. I find that municipalities issued more criminal justice debt during and after the recession across Washington, but that government finances as measured by tax receipts and expenditures per capita were weakly related to sentencing practices. These findings suggest that macroeconomic fiscal pressures may be drivers of enforcement and prosecutorial practices through increasing case volumes, but that macroeconomic pressures and local fiscal pressures did not appear to shift court sentencing practices in Washington during the Great Recession.

Although I have provided direct services and engaged in litigation related to municipal fines & fees in New York City, monetary sanctions are not my area of legal expertise. Bearing that in mind, I am offering these thoughts in my capacity as a scholar of law, race, and money, and more importantly, as an organizer for economic justice. I hope the essay facilitates constructive conversations about the frameworks we use to analyze the political economy of monetary sanctions and mass incarceration. I am grateful to the UCLA Criminal Justice Law Review and the organizers of “Progressing Reform of Fees and Fines: Towards A Research and Policy Agenda Conference”, hosted at Harvard Law School, for the opportunity to share these reflections.

Monetary sanctions include fines, fees, restitution, surcharges, interest, and other costs imposed on people who are convicted of crimes ranging from traffic violations to violent felonies. We analyze how people in the court system theorize about monetary sanctions with regards to four kinds of justice: constitutional, retributive, procedural, and distributive justice. Drawing on qualitative interviews with sixty-eight people sentenced to pay monetary sanctions in Illinois, we identify five themes that illuminate how respondents think about these forms of justice: monetary sanctions are: (1) justifiable punishment, (2) impossible to pay due to poverty, (3) double punishment, (4) extortion, and (5) collected by an opaque and greedy state. We find that for defendants in the criminal justice system, monetary sanctions serve some retributive aims, but do not align with the other three domains of justice. We discuss the policy implications of these findings.

Monetary sanctions have long been a part of the U.S. criminal justice system but have received increasing attention from the public as well as legal scholars and social science research in recent years. This essay describes initial findings from the Multi-State Study of Monetary Sanctions, a multi-method study designed to build on the prior research on legal financial obligations (LFOs) by examining the multi-tiered systems of monetary sanctions operating within eight states representing key regions of the United States (California, Georgia, Illinois, Minnesota, Missouri, New York, Texas and Washington). Our research explores the constantly changing legal environment and documents how the law is practiced on the ground. We expand on prior research by engaging a large and diverse group of people who owe legal debt and criminaljustice stakeholders. We augment these data with systematic court observations across different jurisdiction sizes and court levels. In doing so, we fill important gaps in the current understanding of U.S. systems of monetary and provide findings that can be used for guiding policy.

In the years since Officer Darren Wilson shot and killed Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, policymakers and advocates have pushed for reforms to both police practices and systems of fines and fees. The connection between fines and fees enforcement tactics and police violence remains an important focus for reforms. Police play a significant role in driving up the volume and amounts of fines and fees imposed, and they play a critical role in city and state collection efforts. The use of police as debt imposers and collectors creates opportunities for police violence—both physical use of force, as well as more nuanced forms of violence through the exertion of coercion, fear, and control. In this piece, I argue that specific policing tactics used to impose and collect fines and fees, and the wide latitude given to police via Fourth Amendment jurisprudence to engage in such tactics, facilitates conditions similar to those in Ferguson and results in unnecessary and oppressive police violence. To combat this, I argue that fines and fees reforms must focus on the role of law enforcement in such systems, and how that role must be greatly limited to prevent additional violence.