Financial Literacy without the Finances: Social Distance between Courtroom Bureaucrats and those Under their Surveillance

• In Event: 4155 - Section on Crime, Law, and Deviance Refereed Roundtables (1 hour)
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: 9. Monetary Sanctions, Pre-Trial Detention, and Misdemeanor Courts

Abstract

While there is a growing body of work examining how monetary sanctions shape the lives of those who incur such debts, understanding how the particular processes courts utilize to manage and enforce payments shapes debtors’ lives has been undertheorized. Pulling from 126 interviews with folks who have been assessed court debt due to misdemeanor and/or felony convictions and over one hundred hours of courtroom observations across Illinois and Washington State, we examine how labor market participation in particular is strained by the way courts manage payment of monetary sanctions and restitution. Leveraging across and within state differences in the court’s debt management processes, we identify and conceptualize particular procedural pressures points embedded within these systems that shape an individual’s ability to access and maintain stable employment. While respondents also identified barriers to employment traditionally found in the literature, these procedural pressure points were unique in the way they shaped labor market participation. These procedural pressure points demanded time and resources for those who incur these debts and often resulted missed work, lost wages, and in some cases, job loss. These findings suggest that courts themselves can play a key role in shaping the lives of individuals post-conviction and the policies they implement to manage people’s lives can ensnare individuals in a cycle of poverty and court surveillance.

Authors

• Michele L. Cadigan, University of Washington

• Gabriela Kirk, Northwestern University