Search

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]

Legal financial obligations (LFOs) associated with justice system involvement are increasingly a focus for policymakers and researchers seeking to understand sources of inequality and the factors that promote successful reentry. These conversations often rely on an assumption that LFOs are associated with or may even drive higher rates of recidivism. The empirical research in this area, however, has not kept up with the growing strength of these claims. This study reports findings that may offer a new perspective and contribute to an evidence‐based debate. Multisourced administrative data on all individuals released from carceral supervision in an East Coast state (N = 21,301) over 3 years are used to examine the complex relationship between criminal justice debt and reoffending. We detail the results of survival analyses estimating the impact of these debts on various forms of recidivism. Broadly, we find that even though the relationship between case‐level LFO assessments and future offending did not reach statistical significance, the association with the cumulative effect of monetary sanctions over the life course did. Furthermore, the impact of LFO debt is greater for certain racial groups, supporting theoretical and practical inquiries into factors informing structural disadvantage. Implications for policy and future research are considered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the United States, legal financial obligations (LFOs) include many types of monetary sanctions. For example, fines are tied to specific offenses and imposed at conviction and fees charge people for the "use" of courts, prisons, and other public services. With the rise of mass incarceration, millions of people across the U.S. owe billions of dollars in LFOs. Yet despite the widespread use of monetary sanctions, it was not until the last decade that research began to uncover the vast system of LFOs embedded throughout U.S. laws and understand their far‐reaching socioeconomic consequences. This paper reviews recent research on LFOs across three areas: (1) the political development of LFOs, (2) their implementation and enforcement, and (3) the consequences of LFOs on people, broader social networks, and the functioning of public institutions. We conclude with recommendations for future research that explores the hidden processes connecting these three areas and accounts for the fractured nature of the U.S. government. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

People convicted of crime are often treated as atomistic individuals by the criminal justice system, ignoring the fact that they are largely embedded in social networks. Research shows that family members are often negatively impacted by their relatives’ punishment despite not breaking any laws themselves. These detrimental effects of punishment on family are known as symbiotic harms. Most research on symbiotic harms, however, has focused on incarceration. We extend this research by describing how monetary sanctions harm the families of adults with legal debt. Our data come from semi-structured interviews with 140 people with legal debt and ninety-six court actors in Georgia and Missouri. We find evidence that family members are often coerced into paying their relatives’ fines and fees and that monetary sanctions increase the financial strain, emotional distress, and interpersonal conflict that relatives experience.

Knowledge about legal financial obligations in American punishment has been largely confined to criminal law and the penal codes of a few states. Yet in the nation’s most populous state, California, there is reason to believe that a wider expanse of law beyond the penal code harbors the legal capacity to impose monetary punishments and indebtedness. A legal census of the entire corpus of California’s civil and criminal statutory law identifies the presence and distribution of monetary sanctioning statutes within each and across all of the state’s twenty-nine legislative code sections. Results show that one in twenty-three statutes in California law concern monetary sanctions and that they are dispersed throughout every section of the legislative code. Our investigation reveals that monetary sanctions are embedded within the broader architecture of state law, and that variations in the structure, as much as the substance, of statutory schemes must figure into empirical and theoretical accounts of racial disparity in the imposition of monetary punishments.

People convicted of crime are often treated as atomistic individuals by the criminal justice system, ignoring the fact that they are largely embedded in social networks. Research shows that family members are often negatively impacted by their relatives’ punishment despite not breaking any laws themselves. These detrimental effects of punishment on family are known as symbiotic harms. Most research on symbiotic harms, however, has focused on incarceration. We extend this research by describing how monetary sanctions harm the families of adults with legal debt. Our data come from semi-structured interviews with 140 people with legal debt and ninety-six court actors in Georgia and Missouri. We find evidence that family members are often coerced into paying their relatives’ fines and fees and that monetary sanctions increase the financial strain, emotional distress, and interpersonal conflict that relatives experience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The relationship between criminal legal involvement and housing is complex because the causal arrow goes both ways. Research documents a homelessness-incarceration nexus whereby homelessness is criminalized, and incarceration leads to homelessness. In this article, we broaden the scope of housing outcomes by considering housing instability more generally and we shift the focus to legal financial obligations (LFOs) as a specific kind of criminal legal sanction, apart from incarceration or the effects of a record. Our data consist of surveys and qualitative interviews with people paying LFOs (N = 519), interviews with court actors (N = 443), and more than 1,900 hours of courtroom ethnography in eight states, plus nationally representative survey data. We find substantial evidence of a housing instability-LFO nexus, a caustic churn whereby a population with identifiable housing hardships is saddled with a punishment that deepens financial strain and thus weakens housing stability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Monetary sanctions mandated in state statutes include fines, fees, restitution, and other legal costs imposed on persons convicted of crimes and other legal violations. Drawing on content analysis of current legislative statutes in Illinois pertaining to monetary sanctions, we ask three questions: What are defendants expected to pay for and why? What accommodations exist for defendants’ poverty? What are the consequences for nonpayment? We find that neoliberal logics of personal responsibility and carceral expansion suffuse these laws, establishing a basis for transferring public costs onto criminal defendants, offering little relief for poverty, and supporting severe additional penalties for unpaid debt. Statutory inequality legally authorizes further impoverishment of the poor, thereby increasing inequality. Major related organizing and advocacy work, however, has created an opening for significant changes toward greater fairness.

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]

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]

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]

During the late 20th century, imprisonment rates in the United States saw unprecedented growth, leading correctional systems across the country to face widespread overcrowding and underfunding. Subsequently, policy makers sought out alternatives to incarceration for certain categories of offenses. Community supervision, such as probation, emerged as a popular solution to both reduce prison and jail populations as well as to generate revenue to fund the rapidly expanding legal system. With the rise in community supervision came increases in the number of people on probation for lower-level and non-violent offenses. The expansion of legal financial obligations (LFO) placed additional burdens on these persons, who disproportionately sit in lower socio-economic status brackets. Using data from the 1995 Survey of Adults on Probation (SAP), the current study adds to the literature on probation and LFOs in an important way. The SAP data contain information on the amount, frequency, and type of LFO. Thus, this paper examines the distinct types of LFOs to determine the differential burden that each type of LFO has on people on probation. This paper finds that of all types of fees, those associated with victim restitution are most likely to lead to missed payments, while those that generate revenues do not contribute significantly to missed payments. This paper discusses the implications of this for procedural justice and fairness.

The Ferguson Report became a watershed moment for understanding the costs and consequences of the monetary sanctions system for communities of color. Since that time, myriad reports, studies, and commissions have uncovered evidence that suggests that Ferguson, Missouri, was not an outlier but rather part of a broader set of systems throughout the country that relied on increasingly punitive assessment and collection strategies for revenue. The growth and expansion of these systems continue to have detrimental and widespread consequences. In this article, we aim to shed light on the current state of monetary sanctions as the full scope and damage of the monetary sanctions system come better into focus on the national, state, and local level. We explore the legal challenges and legislative reforms that are attempting to reshape the landscape of monetary sanctions and lessen the burden on economically disadvantaged individuals and communities of color. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the late 20th century, imprisonment rates in the United States saw unprecedented growth, leading correctional systems across the country to face widespread overcrowding and underfunding. Subsequently, policy makers sought out alternatives to incarceration for certain categories of offenses. Community supervision, such as probation, emerged as a popular solution to both reduce prison and jail populations as well as to generate revenue to fund the rapidly expanding legal system. With the rise in community supervision came increases in the number of people on probation for lower-level and non-violent offenses. The expansion of legal financial obligations (LFO) placed additional burdens on these persons, who disproportionately sit in lower socio-economic status brackets. Using data from the 1995 Survey of Adults on Probation (SAP), the current study adds to the literature on probation and LFOs in an important way. The SAP data contain information on the amount, frequency, and type of LFO. Thus, this paper examines the distinct types of LFOs to determine the differential burden that each type of LFO has on people on probation. This paper finds that of all types of fees, those associated with victim restitution are most likely to lead to missed payments, while those that generate revenues do not contribute significantly to missed payments. This paper discusses the implications of this for procedural justice and fairness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]