Incarceration and Indebtedness in Young Adulthood: Examining the Role of State “Hidden Sentence” Policies

• In Event: 4155 - Section on Crime, Law, and Deviance Refereed Roundtables (1 hour)
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: 7. Incarceration & Inequality

Abstract

The American criminal justice system has expanded considerably since the 1970s, and individuals who have been incarcerated are disadvantaged across broad indicators of socioeconomic status including employment, earnings, net worth, and homeownership. We extend this research in two primary ways. First, we expand the scope of socioeconomic inequality by asking if incarceration is associated with unsecured debt owed to credit card companies, banks, and businesses. Second, we push past average effects of incarceration to examine if the consequences of incarceration are driven by state-level hidden sentences, or penalties and restrictions that operate outside of formal punishments to restrict core elements of citizenship and full societal participation. We draw on a combination of individual-level data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997 Cohort (NLSY97) and state-level data from the National Inventory of the Collateral Consequences of Conviction (NICCC). Our findings indicate that young adults with a history of incarceration are less likely overall to carry unsecured debt, but that among debtors, young adults with a history of incarceration carry considerably larger debt burdens than their never-incarcerated counterparts. In both cases, the consequences of incarceration are most severe for individuals residing in states with high levels of hidden sentences. Our findings provide further evidence on the diverse and deleterious economic outcomes associated with incarceration, and contribute to growing knowledge of the indebtedness of American families.

Authors

• Cody Warner, Montana State University

• Jason N. Houle, Dartmouth College

• Joshua Kaiser, Dartmouth College