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This article examines the repeal of prison pay-to-stay policies in the United States. We process-trace reform efforts in Illinois drawing from novel data retrieved through multiple FOIA requests to state agencies and public records searches. Our analysis reveals how lawmakers who advocated for reforming the shadow carceral state in 2016 and 2019 through repealing prison pay-to-stay repurposed penal logics they had once used punitively in the 1980s and 1990s to enact the same policy—such as protecting taxpayers, fiscal efficiency, and rehabilitation. Our findings advance existing research by suggesting that penal logics are open to interpretation depending on the socioeconomic and historical moment. These contextual factors are also crucial to determining how lawmakers and institutions re-interpret long held penal logics when reforming the shadow carceral state. We argue the ways in which lawmakers strategically operationalize penal logics exemplifies their cultural durability as a resonant means to a political end. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research on the shadow carceral state identifies new species of criminal-civil and civil-criminal legal hybrids embedded in state law. We bring into conversation disparate literatures on growing family complexity, monetary sanctions, justiciable problems, and child support enforcement to examine how contemporary American families experience a system of double and triple jeopardy—the compounding risks of exposure to both criminal and civil debts at the nexus of a legal hybrid, wherein monetary sanctions (criminal) and child support orders (civil) become co-constitutive (double jeopardy), thereby amplifying the risk that a parent will also experience (civil) child support arrearage (triple jeopardy). Using data from seven sources to construct a unique dataset, we evaluate the spatial and racial risk of double and triple jeopardy, as well as the state-level factors that explain them. Our analysis provides a valid description of, and critically establishes the sociolegal precarity wherein, currently incarcerated parents observe and experience their risks of double and triple jeopardy in the child support system via its orders, collections, and enforcement powers. We find that there are, indeed, racial and spatial disparities in the risk of double and triple jeopardy, and that specific state-level factors increment and decrement those risks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Whether the imposition of monetary sanctions is related to juvenile recidivism is explored overall and across race and ethnicity. Leveraging a statewide sample, logistic regression was used to predict fees and restitution assignment based on youth/case characteristics, hierarchical linear and logistic random-effects regression examined the association between neighborhood characteristics with fees and restitution, and propensity score matching examined whether fees and/or restitution are related to reoffending. No race/ethnic differences were found in the proportion of youth receiving court fees, yet when fees were administered both Black and Hispanic youth received higher fees. Neighborhood characteristics have minimal impact on whether (or the amounts) monetary sanctions were assigned. Post-matching, fees increased recidivism, as did being Black or Hispanic. Interactions between race/ethnicity and both fees and restitution showed Black youth with restitution had a higher recidivism likelihood. Monetary sanctions imposed on youth involved in the juvenile justice system has a potential deleterious impact on recidivism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the last several decades, with the rise of mass incarceration in the United States and its steep costs, governments at the federal, state, and local levels have dramatically ramped up monetary punishment. Monetary sanctions are now the most common type of criminal penalty in the United States. The growth of fines, fees, and other legal financial obligations (LFOs), and the ensuing legal debt, reflect a shifting of the system's costs onto its primarily low-income and indigent subjects. This study provides an exploration of previously underexamined ways in which monetary sanctions impose distinct burdens on the poor. Interviews with 121 defendants in Texas and New York, along with courtroom observations, demonstrate that criminal legal debt is particularly challenging for people with low incomes in three meaningful ways. First, systems set up to handle indigency claims do not adequately address the needs or complex individual circumstances of those who simply do not have the ability to pay. Oftentimes, alternatives are unavailable or statutorily prohibited. Second, the lack of alternatives to payment lead to compromising situations, which then compel indigent defendants to make difficult choices about how to allocate scant resources. Finally, being encumbered with fines and fees and participating in alternatives like community service comes with taxing time requirements that can prove uniquely challenging for those who are poor. These three findings lead us to propose a series of policy recommendations revolving around three key themes: (a) enhancement of indigency procedures, (b) equity in monetary sanctions, and (c) alleviating burdens by improving accessibility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Monetary sanctions levied on individuals on probation and parole may dramatically influence their ability to reintegrate into the community and to complete their community supervision. Yet very little work has empirically assessed how agencies respond to these obligations. This is critical, given that individuals under community supervision occupy a liminal space: free in the community yet often at risk of violation, rearrest, additional fines, or re-incarceration. In this article, we introduce an approach to the collection and management of monetary sanctions by an adult probation and parole agency in one Pennsylvania county. This specialized department focuses solely on repayment of fines, fees, and costs for a subset of probationers and parolees who have completed all other supervision requirements. We complement the conceptual overview by presenting administrative data on this caseload (N = 5,811) to describe the population under supervision and assess the factors associated with debt amount, having difficulty with repayment, and being the subject of an enforcement action for non-payment. We conclude with a discussion of the advantages and disadvantages of this model compared with historical and other existing models of debt enforcement during community supervision. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Monetary sanctions in the criminal legal system are legally and procedurally complex. If not paid in a timely manner, a single conviction can result in multiple legal financial obligations, varying in kind, payment procedure, and consequences. This study examines how, and the extent to which, criminal legal debtors understand monetary sanctions. Based on interviews with 60 individuals who owed criminal legal debt in New York, we propose a typology of debtor understanding. Proximal understanding pertains to individual, case-level factors and is instrumentally oriented. Distal understanding concerns system-level matters and is oriented toward normativity and fairness. We examine how debtors develop each type of understanding, how these dimensions interact, and the implications of debtor understanding for compliance behavior. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The expansion of monetary sanctions constitutes what Beckett and Murakawa describe as the "shadow carceral state," where covert penal power is expanded through institutional annexation by blending civil, administrative, and criminal legal authority. A growing body of work on monetary sanctions has begun to dissect covert penal power by tracing increased civil and administrative pipelines to incarceration, civil financial alternatives to criminal sanctions, and innovations to generate criminal justice revenue. However, institutional annexation and innovation in the form of contemporary pay-to-stay practices remain understudied and undertheorized. In this article, I first examine statutes and practices to theorize pay-to-stay as exemplary of the shadow carceral state—an outcome of legal hybridity and institutional annexation legitimated using the legal construction of "not punishment," which frames monetary sanctions as non-punitive. Second, I expand Beckett and Murakawa's framework to argue pay-to-stay practices reveal how the shadow carceral state compounds or initiates the civil death of those charged. I broaden our notion of civil death to include financial indebtedness to the shadow carceral state. I suggest covert penal power expands through the accumulation of resources extracted from people marked for civil death through criminal justice contact. Finally, I conclude that monetary sanctions such as pay-to-stay reveal how the shadow carceral state expands covert penal power through necrocapitalism, meaning institutional accumulation occurs through dispossession and the subjugation of life to the power of death. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Monetary sanctions are a common tool for enforcing accountability within the criminal justice system. However, it is unclear how individuals with disabilities who have a limited capacity to work interact with the system of monetary sanctions. Drawing on courtroom observations and interviews in Washington State, we find that although the court does take disability into account when imposing economic sanctions and monitoring payment compliance, individuals with disabilities end up in a perpetual cycle of administrative hearings that can result in serious financial and health consequences for those involved. Implications for findings are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

California courts increasingly order community service for those convicted of nonviolent and minor misdemeanors or infractions, assigning unpaid work to be performed. While court-ordered community service has been used as an alternative to incarceration and the payment of fines, little is known about the monetary and personal costs for those completing it. A case study design is used to examine court-ordered community service performed in Southeast Los Angeles. Data were gathered from a quantitative dataset of 541 court files of those assigned to community service and 32 in-depth interviews with attorneys and court-ordered community service workers. While the quantitative data and Attorney interviews found that negative outcomes of community service can drive community service workers deeper into debt and result in new warrants that place defendants at risk for rearrest, individuals that completed community service appreciated the opportunity to pay off their criminal justice debts and stay out of jail. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The importance of monetary sanctions as a topic of sociological inquiry derives from both their ubiquity in American criminal justice and the socioeconomic realities of many people, especially those ensnared in the criminal legal system. This essay reviews the literature on monetary sanctions across various fields, including applied research, economics, criminology, political science, public policy, and sociology. Early approaches tended to be more system evaluations, whereas later work emphasizes the structural determinants of monetary sanctions and their impacts. Insights from research across time and discipline foreshadow the contemporary debate about monetary sanctions and are important precursors to the work in this volume. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Restitution as a social practice can simultaneously have a punitive effect and add to a person's criminal justice debt load, while maintaining a reparative and therefore restorative component. We use principles of restorative justice to assess restitution as a concept and a practice, drawing on data from a survey experiment administered to a nationally representative sample (n = 433). We find that the common and strongly preferred conception of restitution is "direct," entailing a convicted person compensating a victim for quantifiable loss. Evidence from Victim Compensation Funds (VCFs) in all 50 states demonstrate the widespread use of "indirect" restitution, through which funds from various sources are distributed to qualifying victims. Broader trends in criminal justice policy related to the centering of the victim and a managerial approach to punishment help explain our findings. We conclude that the divergence between common conception and widespread practice indicates a need for a revised notion of restitution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Due to increasing recognition of the collateral consequences associated with monetary sanctions, fees have begun to occupy a prominent place in critical debates. This is especially true for community corrections, where multiple fees are assessed and collected. However, the agency-level perspective has largely been omitted, especially regarding how the current landscape may facilitate—or impede—reform. Using self-report data from a state-wide sample of Chiefs of Probation and Parole, this paper provides a new perspective on the complex interplay between the policy and practices surrounding monetary sanctions. Responses suggest that the practices and philosophies surrounding the collection of fees vary significantly between jurisdictions. This obligation is also reported to challenge the traditional roles of probation officers by limiting discretion and complicating the existing tensions between their treatment and control-oriented responsibilities. Some respondents indicated meaningful reliance on fee revenue for operational and treatment budgets. Implications for policy reform, especially considering the variation observed in this single state, are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using a comparative historical analysis of legislative transcripts and primary and secondary historical documents in Illinois and Michigan, we trace the adoption of a largely understudied form of monetary sanction: pay-to-stay fees. Pay-to-stay fees are financial commitments imposed by the state on incarcerated individuals for the day-to-day cost of their incarceration. Our study identified two mutually constitutive bureaucratic motivations for the adoption of these fees—austerity as the primary rationale and deservingness as a secondary rationale. This analysis highlights an earlier conceptualization of monetary sanctions as a means of revenue generation than has previously been explored. Our findings suggest that pay-to-stay fees originated in these states from broader debates about who is ultimately fiscally responsible for the welfare state and the soaring costs of maintaining the rehabilitative ideal. During periods of fiscal crisis, state legislators have consistently looked toward this type of monetary sanction as a means to fund the correctional system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent critiques of the decision to make monetary sanctions a condition of probation have suggested that the practice could hinder the successful completion of probation. However, few studies have explored this relationship empirically, and among those that do, the findings are relatively inconclusive and often dependent on the sample and measures used. Building on this research, the current study examines the imposition of four monetary sanctions on a sample of felony cases involving indigent adult probationers from a Florida public defender’s office. The results indicate that although monetary sanctions have relatively little impact on probation violations generally, the effects of these penalties vary based on the severity of the violation. Legal factors are consistently the most significant predictors of the likelihood and severity of probation violations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper discusses the role of punishment in a criminal justice system by elaborating its functions. It focusses mainly on monetary sanctions (fine) as a type of punishment under the criminal law and analyzes its efficiency on the basis of the punishment theories. With specific reference to the Indian Penal Code, 1860 the paper categorizes the placement of monetary sanctions in the statute into three variants: where the amount of sanction is mentioned in the provision, where the amount of fine is not mentioned in the provision and where monetary sanctions stand as an alternative to imprisonment in the provision. The paper critiques the third variant as a commodification of offence and provides suggestions to update the statute to enable the efficiency of monetary sanctions as a type of punishment in criminal law. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent research suggests that the use of monetary sanctions as a supplementary penalty in state and federal criminal courts is expanding, and that their imposition creates substantial and deleterious legal debt. Little is known, however, about the factors that influence the discretionary imposition of these penalties. This study offers a comprehensive account of the role socio-cultural factors, especially race and ethnicity, have in this institutional sanctioning process. We rely on multilevel statistical analysis of the imposition of monetary sanctions in Washington State courts to test our theory. The theoretical framework emphasizes the need to treat race and ethnicity as complex cultural categories, the meaning and institutional effects of which may vary across time and space. Findings indicate that racialized crime scripts, such as the association of Latinos with drugs, affect defendants whose wrong-doing is stereotype congruent. Moreover, all individuals accused of committing racially and ethnically stigmatized offenses in racialized contexts may experience the courtesy stigma that flows from racialization. We find that race and ethnicity are not just individual attributes but cultural categories that shape the distribution of stigma and the institutional consequences that flow from it. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]