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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]

Exponential growth in order maintenance policing and associated misdemeanor sanctions have led to disproportionate consequences for people of color. Using data from qualitative interviews with individuals in the metropolitan St. Louis, Missouri, region, the current study documents the racialized and monetized nature of police contact. This work extends extant scholarship by considering how minor contact with the police shapes individual avoidance behaviors and activity spaces, places where people work and live. We consider how the combination of monetary sanctions, warrants, incarceration, and overpolicing in the region affects avoidance behaviors, particularly for people of color. Our findings suggest that the frequently unpredictable nature of police contacts and the parochial and often profit‐focused structure of policing organizations in the region leads individuals to modify the ways in which they move through the region and, for some, to isolate. Narratives reflect the need for constant calibration of behaviors and decisions, as well as the legacy that police contact and monetary sanctions can have on everyday routines. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]