Costs Associated With Attending Bond Court for Family Members of Accused Persons

• In Event: 3222 - Section on Crime, Law, and Deviance Refereed Roundtable Session
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: Table 01. Courts and Policing

Abstract

This paper discusses the experiences of family members of accused people in Cook County bond court. Through interviews and ethnographic observations, we find that there are several costs for family members of accused persons to attend bond court. In this paper, we name three: financial cost, emotional cost, and relationship cost. We contribute to two sets of literatures: first, we supplement literature on bond court by offering a qualitative analysis of the bond court experience of family members of accused persons, and second, we contribute to the literature on “secondary prisonization” (Comfort 2008) by showing that the burden to family members of people with criminal legal contact does not start at conviction, but at the moment a loved one’s contact with the system begins.

Authors

• Erin Eife, University of Illinois at Chicago

• Beth Richie, University of Illinois at Chicago