The Relationship Between Criminal Justice Reform and Revenue Generation

• In Event: Local Government Agencies

Abstract

Criminal justice is expensive, time-consuming, and publicly contentious. Local governments have several plausible motivations for adopting criminal justice system reforms, including public pressure, criminological theory, and cost reduction. Overly punitive punishment programs cause citizen consternation and further entrap offenders in self-replicating cycles of criminal behavior. Moreover, criminal justice administration is a burden on increasingly financially stressed local governments, as states restrict local governments' abilities to impose new taxes, and reduce intergovernmental transfer revenue. Regardless of impetus, the financial implications of reform efforts on program administration and the criminal justice system are understudied. While there is significant heterogeneity amongst the states, criminal justice systems nearly universally utilize fines and fees to fund some portion of government, ranging from self-funding the criminal justice system to general revenue use by cities and counties. What is the relationship between a jurisdiction's financial health, its criminal justice expenses, and its likelihood of using criminal justice reform programs as revenue generators? I examine local governments' uses of criminal diversion programs, one of the oldest formalized criminal justice reforms in the United States. I hypothesize that jurisdictions under significant financial stress, jurisdictions whose populations have fallen significantly in the preceding 30 years, and jurisdictions with more racially diverse populations, are more likely to engage in using diversion program fees for general fund revenue purposes. I test these hypotheses utilizing a unique dataset of diversion program financials derived from public records requests of all cities and counties in a major metropolitan area. I find that financial distress and population diversity predict using diversion programs as revenue generators. This research speaks to several important concerns with criminal justice reform efforts, including equity of justice administration, expense pressures on local governments, and the interplay between the two.

Author

• Patrick John Gauding, University of Kansas