Envisioning Real Utopias from the Perspective of People with Legal-Financial Obligations

• In Event: Beyond the Debt: Qualitative Insights into Legal Financial Burdens and the Ongoing Quest for Reform

Abstract

Criminal legal scholarship is often criticized for failing to engage with activism and positionality. Simultaneously, abolitionist visions of system change are sometimes positioned as “too utopian.” In this paper, we seek to build on these discourses by examining how people subject to criminalization imagine transforming the criminal legal system. Specifically, we use real utopian and legal envisioning frameworks to understand policy recommendations made by persons with legal-financial obligations. We use a flexible coding schema to analyze 519 interviews from persons who were ordered to pay legal-financial obligations in eight states. Interviews were conducted as a part of the Multi-State Study of Monetary Sanctions. Our findings highlight a wide range of views on reform, where participants expressed both “status quo” and more “radical” viewpoints about criminality and punishment. However, four major themes emerged across our participants. Participants advocated for material reform, administrative, process, and legislative improvements, community and civic engagement opportunities, and more informed and accessible courts. We discuss both the theoretical and practical implications of these responses.

Authors

• Andrea Giuffre, California State University, San Bernardino

• Brittany Martin, University of Rhode Island

• Veronica L. Horowitz, University at Buffalo, SUNY

• Gabriela Kirk-Werner, Syracuse University

• Bryan Sykes, Cornell University

• Karin D. Martin, University of Washington

• Alexes Harris, University of Washington