cover image: Studying the System of Monetary Sanctions

20.500.12592/d8n4x4

Studying the System of Monetary Sanctions

1 Jan 2022

The criminal legal monitoring and collec- and legal logics during pretrial, sentencing, and tion of fines, fees, and other costs extends and review hearings; collected administrative court deepens the punishment of nonpayers and in- data on the imposition of monetary sanctions dividuals reentering society, and warps the very over time; and interviewed and surveyed legal institutions that legislate [...] To- that property offenses and offenses against gether, these studies uncovered the increasing businesses were more likely to be charged res- and excessive use of fines and fees in criminal titution than other types of offenses, and that courts, and the disproportionate burden on restitution was more likely to be charged and poor people and people of color. [...] For example, countability, and redemption, and depending a 2008 report to the Washington State Minority on the county where one was sentenced and and Justice Commission examined the case monitored, individuals carrying legal debt characteristics of individuals sentenced with faced punishments of varying intensity and du- fines and fees in Washington State and ana- ration. [...] This work can documented the increased use of fines and be placed broadly into four categories: statutory fees, the large numbers of individuals incarcer- and institutional contexts of monetary sanc- ated for nonpayment, and the counterproduc- tions, additional costs and revenue generation tive nature of revenue generation (ACLU 2010; for courts and locales, consequences of LFOs Bannon, Nagrecha, [...] In the juvenile realm, Leslie who is sentenced to pay LFOs (Link 2019), and Paik and her colleague (Paik and Packard 2019; others focus on specific consequences of LFOs, Paik 2020) map the types and amounts of LFOs such as recidivism, the loss of driver’s licenses, juvenile courts impose on the guardians of mi- and voting restrictions (Bender et al.

Authors

Alexes Harris, Mary Pattillo, Bryan L. Sykes

DOI
https://doi.org/10.7758/RSF.2022.8.1.01
ISBN
2377-8253 2377-8261
Published in
United States of America
Rights
© 2022 Russell Sage Foundation. Harris, Alexes, Mary Pattillo, and Bryan Sykes. 2022. “Studying the System of Monetary Sanctions.” RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences 8(1): 1–33. DOI: 10.7758 /RSF.2022.8.1.01. This research was funded by a grant to the University of Washington from Arnold Ventures (Alexes Harris, PI). We thank the faculty and graduate student collaborators in the Multi-State Study of Monetary Sanctions for their intellectual contributions to the project. Partial support for this research came from a Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development research infrastructure grant, P2C HD042828, to the Center for Studies in Demography and Ecology at the University of Washington. Direct correspondence to: Alexes Harris, at yharris@uw.edu, Department of Sociology, Box 353340, University of Washington, Seattle, WA 98195-3340, United States.

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