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Monetary sanctions, also known as legal financial obligations (LFOs), are a highly consequential yet underexplored element of the criminal legal system. LFOs consist of fines, fees, costs, restitution, surcharges, and other financial penalties that are imposed on individuals when they encounter the criminal legal system. This contact can occur via traffic citation, or misdemeanor, juvenile, and felony conviction. Although indistinguishable for the people who are required to pay them, monetary sanctions are variably understood as punishments prescribed by state statutes and local codes, restitution for victims of crime, user fees to recoup system expenses or pay for services rendered, and additional charges for failure to pay. Most monetary sanctions are sentenced on conviction or citation, but some pretrial costs—such as jail booking fees, electronic monitoring, or public defender services in the absence of a conviction—can be passed on to defendants as well.1 These fines and fees are experienced as bills and debts for those on whom they are imposed and as revenue sources for the courts, agencies, jurisdictions, and states that collect them. Although the practice of imposing fines and fees on convicted persons has existed in law since the Magna Carta in 1215, research shows that the prevalence and amounts of monetary sanctions have grown over the last five decades across federal, state, and local governments (Bannon, Nagrecha, and Diller 2010; Fergus 2018; Greenberg, Meredith, and Morse 2016; Harris, Evans, and Beckett 2010; Harris 2016; Shapiro 2014; U.S. Commission on Civil Rights 2017).2The policy, legal, and social science literatures on monetary sanctions document critical features of this punishment schema (for an extensive review, see Martin et al. 2018; Martin 2020). Research shows that individuals struggle to pay their court debts, making it even more difficult to pay for essential expenses such as food, housing, health care, medicine, transportation, and childcare, thereby increasing stress (Harris, Evans, and Beckett 2010; Harris 2016; Pleggenkuhle 2018). This burden is not borne solely by those convicted of crimes but also by their family members and communities (deVuono-powell et al. 2015; Katzenstein and Waller 2015). Further, because people are not released from criminal legal supervision until their accounts are fully paid, monetary sanctions prolong supervision, make probation violations more likely, escalate sanctions for new criminal convictions, and result in incarceration for nonpayment (ACLU 2010; T. Atkinson 2016; Kohler-Hausmann 2018; Middlemass 2017; Western 2018). The racially disparate impact of monetary sanctions intensifies the aggressive policing of Black and Latinx neighborhoods because these groups typically find it more difficult to pay (Harris, Evans, and Beckett 2011; Henrichson et al. 2017; Henricks and Harvey 2017; Piquero and Jennings 2017; Sances and You 2017; U.S. Commission on Civil Rights 2017). The criminal legal monitoring and collection of fines, fees, and other costs extends and deepens the punishment of nonpayers and individuals reentering society, and warps the very legal institutions that legislate and implement these practices (Harris, Evans, and Beckett 2010, 2011; Harris 2016; Pattillo and Kirk 2021).

Research on carceral institutions and mortality finds that people in prisons and jails have a high risk of death immediately following release from custody and that while incarcerated, racial disparities in prisoner mortality counter observed death patterns among similarly situated non-incarcerated, demographic groups. Yet, many of these studies rely on data prior to the millennium, during the COVID-19 pandemic, or are relegated to a small number or select group of states. In this paper, we explore changes in mortality and life-expectancy among different demographic groups, before and after the Great Recession, across forty-four states that reported deaths in custody to the federal government between 2000 and 2014. Drawing on a novel dataset created and curated, we calculate standard, age- specific quantities (death rates and life-expectancy) using period lifetable methods, disaggregated by race and sex, across three different periods (2000-2004, 2005-2009, and 2010-2014) for each state. Ordinary least squares regression models with state and year fixed-effects are included to examine state-level factors that may explain differences in prisoner mortality rates between 2000 and 2014. We also benchmark death counts reported to federal agencies with official state reports to cross-validate general mortality patterns. Among imprisoned men, age-specific trends in mortality have shifted across the three periods. Following the Great Recession and the push for criminal justice reforms, prisoner mortality dropped significantly and is concentrated at older ages among men during 2010-2014; the shifting pattern of mortality means that men age 30 in 2010-2014 had similar death rates as men in their early 20s during 2000-2004, representing a 7.5 year shift in age-specific mortality rates. Gains in the mortality decline were disproportionately experienced by Non-Hispanic White and Non-Hispanic Black men, with the latter experiencing the greatest gains in life-expectancy of any demographic group. State-level violent crime rates are strongly and positively associated with prison mortality rates across states, net of socioeconomic and political factors. The large and significant disappearance of deaths in prisons from official data reported to federal agencies calls into question the narrowing gap in racial disparities among people in carceral facilities. Legal decisions and social policies aimed at reducing mortality may be most effective in the short-run; however, the effects of these policy changes may fadeout over time. Research should clearly discern whether changes in mortality rates across states are due to diminished gains in social policies or increases in the disappearance (or underreporting) of deaths in custody. Understanding how and why gains in survivorship may stall is important for aligning health initiatives with social policy to facilitate maximal and consistent mortality declines for all demographic groups.

Knowledge about legal financial obligations in American punishment has been largely confined to criminal law and the penal codes of a few states. Yet in the nation’s most populous state, California, there is reason to believe that a wider expanse of law beyond the penal code harbors the legal capacity to impose monetary punishments and indebtedness. A legal census of the entire corpus of California’s civil and criminal statutory law identifies the presence and distribution of monetary sanctioning statutes within each and across all of the state’s twenty-nine legislative code sections. Results show that one in twenty-three statutes in California law concern monetary sanctions and that they are dispersed throughout every section of the legislative code. Our investigation reveals that monetary sanctions are embedded within the broader architecture of state law, and that variations in the structure, as much as the substance, of statutory schemes must figure into empirical and theoretical accounts of racial disparity in the imposition of monetary punishments.

Despite the strong relationship between the rise in mass incarceration over the last forty years and racial inequality in employment and wages, few studies have examined the long-term consequences and spillover effects of criminal justice contact on the black-white wealth gap in the United States. In this paper, we investigate the mechanisms whereby the local and distal incarceration of a family member affects household wealth, focusing on wealth disparities by race and education. Using data from the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP), the Current Population Survey, and the Survey of Inmates in State and Federal Correctional Facilities and Local Jails, we apply fixed-effects and probit models to estimate how a family member's incarceration influences household assets and debt over panel waves. We find that having an incarcerated family member reduced household assets by 64.3 percent and debt by 85.1 percent after we adjusted for the underrepresentation of institutionalization in SIPP data. We also discuss these findings in the context of broader racial disparities in wealth and employment. Our findings demonstrate how contemporary patterns of mass incarceration contribute to the maintenance of social inequality in wealth and form barriers to economic security for other household members.

Research on punishment and inequality finds that people with criminal records routinely avoid systems of surveillance. Yet scholarship on monetary sanctions shows that many people experiencing poverty with criminal legal system debt are also involved with the state in other domains of social life. How can these literatures be resolved? In this article, we posit that past research can be reconciled through a focus on financial double-dealing—disparate and contradictory economic entanglements that redistribute welfare resources from individuals to the criminal legal system and its institutional affiliates. Drawing on nationally representative survey data, as well as unique data collected on people with monetary sanctions in seven states, we find that individuals and families receiving cash and noncash public assistance are significantly more likely to owe monetary sanctions and are less likely to pay them. We discuss the implications of multiple-system involvement for ongoing surveillance.

In this article we examine the link between family complexity—measured by noncustodial parenthood and multiple-partner fertility—and incarceration. In 2012, close to 2.6 million children, or roughly one in twenty-five minors, had a parent in jail or prison. The risk of having a parent currently or ever incarcerated is disproportionately concentrated among black children and children of high school dropouts, many of whom are noncustodial parents. Variation in question wording, differences in length of exposure to parental incarceration, and the measurement of residential parenthood in household-based sample surveys converge to produce different estimates of race and class inequality in having a parent currently or ever incarcerated, when compared to similar estimates of parental incarceration from inmate surveys. Drawing on data from multiple sources and the development of a new method for the estimation of multiple-partner fertility among inmates, we consider how race and class inequality in parental incarceration may contribute to family complexity and the reproduction of childhood disadvantage.

Monetary sanctions are an integral and increasingly debated feature of the American criminal legal system. Emerging research, including that featured in this volume, offers important insight into the law governing monetary sanctions, how they are levied, and how their imposition affects inequality. Monetary sanctions are assessed for a wide range of contacts with the criminal legal system ranging from felony convictions to alleged traffic violations with important variability in law and practice across states. These differences allow for the identification of features of law, policy, and practice that differentially shape access to justice and equality before the law. Common practices undermine individuals’rights and fuel inequality in the effects of unpaid monetary sanctions. These observations lead us to offer a number of specific recommendations to improve the administration of justice, mitigate some of the most harmful effects of monetary sanctions, and advance future research.

Monetary sanctions, also known as legal financial obligations (LFOs), are a highly consequential yet underexplored element of the criminal legal system. LFOs consist of fines, fees, costs, restitution, surcharges, and other financial penalties that are imposed on individuals when they encounter the criminal legal system. This contact can occur via traffic citation, or misdemeanor, juvenile, and felony conviction. Although indistinguishable for the people who are required to pay them, monetary sanctions are variably understood as punishments prescribed by state statutes and local codes, restitution for victims of crime, user fees to recoup system expenses or pay for services rendered, and additional charges for failure to pay. Most monetary sanctions are sentenced on conviction or citation, but some pretrial costs—such as jail booking fees, electronic monitoring, or public defender services in the absence of a conviction—can be passed on to defendants as well.1 These fines and fees are experienced as bills and debts for those on whom they are imposed and as revenue sources for the courts, agencies, jurisdictions, and states that collect them. Although the practice of imposing fines and fees on convicted persons has existed in law since the Magna Carta in 1215, research shows that the prevalence and amounts of monetary sanctions have grown over the last five decades across federal, state, and local governments (Bannon, Nagrecha, and Diller 2010; Fergus 2018; Greenberg, Meredith, and Morse 2016; Harris, Evans, and Beckett 2010; Harris 2016; Shapiro 2014; U.S. Commission on Civil Rights 2017).2The policy, legal, and social science literatures on monetary sanctions document critical features of this punishment schema (for an extensive review, see Martin et al. 2018; Martin 2020). Research shows that individuals struggle to pay their court debts, making it even more difficult to pay for essential expenses such as food, housing, health care, medicine, transportation, and childcare, thereby increasing stress (Harris, Evans, and Beckett 2010; Harris 2016; Pleggenkuhle 2018). This burden is not borne solely by those convicted of crimes but also by their family members and communities (deVuono-powell et al. 2015; Katzenstein and Waller 2015). Further, because people are not released from criminal legal supervision until their accounts are fully paid, monetary sanctions prolong supervision, make probation violations more likely, escalate sanctions for new criminal convictions, and result in incarceration for nonpayment (ACLU 2010; T. Atkinson 2016; Kohler-Hausmann 2018; Middlemass 2017; Western 2018). The racially disparate impact of monetary sanctions intensifies the aggressive policing of Black and Latinx neighborhoods because these groups typically find it more difficult to pay (Harris, Evans, and Beckett 2011; Henrichson et al. 2017; Henricks and Harvey 2017; Piquero and Jennings 2017; Sances and You 2017; U.S. Commission on Civil Rights 2017). The criminal legal monitoring and collection of fines, fees, and other costs extends and deepens the punishment of nonpayers and individuals reentering society, and warps the very legal institutions that legislate and implement these practices (Harris, Evans, and Beckett 2010, 2011; Harris 2016; Pattillo and Kirk 2021).

The expansion of the criminal justice system over the last four decades and the corresponding rise of parental incarceration raises questions about whether the children of current and former inmates are at an increased risk of material hardship that necessitates social service intervention. Recent sociological scholarship finds that the greater surveillance experienced by former inmates and the criminally involved precludes them from seeking medical care and social services. Yet there is no scholarship that assesses health care and social service utilization among children exposed to parental incarceration. In this article, we investigate how race and educational inequality in parental incarceration were associated with markers of deprivation and social program enlistment after the Great Recession. Using data from the 2011–2012 National Survey of Children's Health (NSCH), we not only find that children with an incarcerated parent experience greater levels of deprivation—material hardship, unmet health needs, and residential instability—but that these children are drawn into social service programs at a higher rate than the rate for children unexposed to parental incarceration. Nearly 2.1 million children (or 81 percent of minors) with an incarcerated parent are enrolled in at least one social service program. Our findings are consistent with a “system inclusion” perspective, which aligns with David Garland's and William Julius Wilson's theoretical and historical explanations of social service participation among disadvantaged minors.

This article examines how the rise in incarceration and its disproportionate concentration among low-skill, young African American men influences estimates of educational attainment in the United States. We focus on high school graduation rates and the persistent gap in attainment that exists between young black and white Americans. Although official statistics show a declining racial gap in high school dropout in recent years, conventional data sources exclude the incarcerated population from sample data. We show how those exclusions underestimate the extent of racial inequality in high school graduation and underestimate the dropout rate among young black men by as much as 40 percent. America's prisons and jails have become repositories for high school dropouts, thereby obscuring the degree of disadvantage faced by black men in the contemporary United States and the relative competitiveness of the U.S. workforce.