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This study examines the intergenerational consequences of court-imposed monetary sanctions for parents and children. Research on punishment and families has generally focused on imprisonment, yet monetary sanctions are far more commonly imposed. We extend research on intergenerational financial exchanges to conceptualize payment of monetary sanctions as stigmatized transfers, analyzing 70 semi-structured interviews with debtholders in Minnesota. Adult children reported perceiving anger and financial strain from family members who provide assistance. Those with minor children expressed hopelessness, stress, and financial strain, as they prioritized basic needs over meeting their outstanding financial obligations. We conclude by discussing the implications of these intergenerational impacts for research, law, and policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Monetary sanctions are in every part of the criminal legal system. This paper explores monetary sanctions in community supervision (probation and parole). The findings from a mixed-methods, multiple-state research study illustrate how fines and fees are administered, collected, and enforced within community supervision. Supervision officers have little discretion in the number of fines and fees assessed but have more discretion in collecting the payments and punishing or sanctioning nonpayment. The findings in this paper also elucidate how individuals and their social supports experience having to pay monetary sanctions. The burden of financial sanctions is not felt only by the individual on supervision but also extends to the family. The article concludes with recommendations for improving the use of monetary sanctions within community supervision. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

AbstractMonetary sanctions are a ubiquitous part of punishment in the criminal legal system. In recent years, highly publicized events have drawn attention to monetary sanctions at the intersection of poverty, race, and legal system contact. The current study uses Autoregressive Integrated Moving Average models to assess monetary sanction reform legislation in St. Louis, Missouri – where the U.S. Department of Justice’s 2015 Ferguson Report implicated monetary sanctions practices as a contributing to tension between the community and the criminal legal system. We find that white defendants experienced an increase in the average amount of fines received (the punishment portion of the sentence), further, the implementation of the reform (modeled as a step function) was associated with increased fee assessments for those receiving monetary sanctions. Further, racial gaps in total assessments across Black and white residents remained, even as fees for Black defendants declined. Our findings highlight how policies can improve some parts of the criminal legal system yet remain insufficient to fully address their stated goals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Academics, policymakers, and practitioners alike are increasingly interested in criminal legal debt stemming from financial sanctions and its consequences on individuals and families. Most prior work has focused on justice system exposure and the accumulation of fines, fees, and costs. This study assesses whether owing criminal court debt is a factor in keeping people tied to the justice system in the short-term yet critical window after release from prison. In addition, I examine whether being under supervision (i.e., probation or parole) increases the chance of owing court-related debt. Relying on longitudinal survey data from the Returning Home Study, results suggest the existence of a feedback loop whereby one's status as being under correctional supervision at release from prison leads to increased debt, which in turn increases the chance of remaining under supervision during the first year out. The findings have implications for law and policy and raise important questions about the role of revenue generation in criminal justice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In political science literature, it is often argued that compulsory voting can serve as a remedy against turnout inequality and thereby contribute to more egalitarian societies. However, the literature neglects differences between compulsory voting systems, and most studies consider the obligation to vote as a dichotomous variable. As a result, relatively little is known about the causal effects of particular stimuli and features of compulsory voting. By exploiting quasi-experimental conditions from direct-democratic decision-making in Switzerland, this research assesses the degree to which abstention fines account for a citizen's willingness to vote under a compulsory voting context. The findings reveal that a marginal increase in monetary sanctions for voter-abstention leads temporally to a sizeable increase in turnout. However, it does not necessarily contribute to the expression of preferences by those traditionally underrepresented in direct-democratic decision-making since a third of those motivated to vote by the threat of a heavier fine will cast an empty or invalid ballot. The effect on turnout is further found to be moderated by income. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]