“Money Instead of Change”: How Civil Compensation for Police Violence Shapes Claimants’ Views of the State

• In Event: 50414 - Citizens Interpretations and Experiences of Law

Abstract

In the years since the protests and police violence of 2020, one of the most concrete actions that came from that period were not reform initiatives but civil rights suits payouts. As municipal leaders and attorneys described the monetary awards as emblematic of “reconciliation” on the part of the municipal governments towards those the police brutalized, questions about the litigants’ interpretations of the money, its exchange, and its implications for their understanding of the police and state were left unanswered by both the media and the extant literature. Drawing upon 35 in-depth interviews, this study bridges the literatures on the socio-legal studies of police misconduct suits and civil litigants’ evaluative experiences of the legal system. I find that litigants conceptualize the money signifying the state’s desire to silence and suppress, engendering a sense of obligation to take their redistributive aims and desire for social transformation into their own hands. Ultimately, these findings present an intriguing case where redress backfires and further ruptures the relationship the litigants have with the state.

Author

• Solome Solomon Haile, Princeton University