Policing for Profit and the Undermining of Democracy: Fines, Fees, and Turnout

• In Event: Partisanship and Voting Among Black Americans

Abstract

In recent years, scholars have documented the effects of criminalization on citizens’ relationship with their government. The American criminal legal system is an important site of political socialization, and its structural inequities have alienated minoritized communities. Sociologists have observed that this results in "system" or "institutional avoidance," while political scientists have measured the effects of police stops, incarceration, and felony disenfranchisement on political participation --- particularly in the voter booth.

Despite this increase in research, relatively little work has explored the effects of one of the most routine interactions Americans have with police: namely, ticketing for low-level offenses. In the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, cash-strapped municipalities increasingly turned to fees and fines collections to fund local services. The democratic effects of this change, however, have gone largely unstudied. Using data from the Census of Governments and the national voter file, we fill this hole in the literature. Our preliminary analyses indicate that municipalities with higher per-capita fees and fines collections have lower turnout, and that this relationship is likely causal. Moreover, we find that municipalities with higher fees and fines have a lower racial turnout gap. Taken together, our project raises important questions about the (racial) representational effects of policing for profit.

Authors

• Jonathan Ben-Menachem, Columbia University

• Kevin Thomas Morris, Brennan Center for Justice