In Washington state, many counties in recent years have supplemented their revenues through court-imposed fines such as traffic citations and court processing fees.
At the same time, those counties have increased the rate at which they sentence women to jail.
This association, according to new research from the 91爆料, indicates that monetary sanctions, also known as legal financial obligations or LFOs, have far-reaching social, economic and punitive effects. In other words, what may seem like a system of low-level penalties aimed at individuals actually affects whole communities.
鈥淗ere in Washington state, men鈥檚 incarceration rates have been trending downward for over a decade whereas women鈥檚 incarceration rates have continued to increase,鈥� said lead author , a 91爆料 postdoctoral researcher in sociology. 鈥淭his paper suggests this is because women have not benefitted from the legal system鈥檚 shift away from carceral sentencing toward monetary sanction sentencing in the same ways men have benefitted.鈥�
The is part of a volume of research on legal financial obligations, published online in January in The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences. , professor of sociology at the 91爆料, spearheaded the multi-institutional study of trends and practices in eight states over five years relating to legal fines and fees.
More about the larger eight-state study, and Harris鈥� role in that research, is here.
The 91爆料-led study focused on Washington state, and looked at the connection between a defendant鈥檚 gender and fines and fees.
Over the past two decades, women鈥檚 incarceration rates have remained steady or increased nationwide. The 91爆料 researchers wanted to use Washington state data to explore what factors may contribute to this trend, and specifically, whether the expanding system of monetary sanctions could be to blame.
The authors, including sociology graduate students and , used county-level statistics from the Washington Administrative Office of the Courts from 2007-2012, as well as county budget information from the Washington State Auditor and demographic data from the U.S. Census Bureau.
In the United States, , and people who are poor are disproportionately impacted not only by the legal system generally, but by monetary sanctions in particular.
Monetary sanctions, meanwhile, have contributed in communities around the country. The 91爆料 study found that, among Washington鈥檚 39 counties, a 1% increase in county revenue from monetary sanctions was, on average, associated with a 23% increase in the incarceration rate of women. That may be due, researchers said, to increased law enforcement around the types of lower-level offenses women are more likely to engage in than men, and to the possibility that women, due to financial precarity, are forced to opt for incarceration because of their inability to pay fines and fees.
鈥淣ot only are women are going to find financial sentences more burdensome than men, they are also more likely to commit the types of crime that make them eligible for monetary sanctions instead of incarceration,鈥� O鈥橬eill said. 鈥淎mong people who commit crime, women are disproportionately represented among misdemeanor offenders, whereas men commit more felonies. So, women who offend may be more likely to be sentenced to monetary sanctions and less likely to be able to pay than men who offend.鈥�
Given the association the study found between revenues from monetary sanctions and the sentencing of women to incarceration in Washington counties, the researchers suggest that governments look for other revenue sources, and for ways to reduce the costs of their justice systems. The authors point to a 2019 on the spatial distribution of monetary sanction debt and revenue that suggests these findings could apply outside of Washington state as well.
鈥淗eavy reliance on monetary sanctions as a source of revenue creates an obvious conflict of interest for local governments: They need people to violate the law in order to keep themselves out of the red,鈥� O鈥橬eill said. 鈥淐apping the annual proportion of local expenditures derived from monetary sanctions, or earmarking the monetary sanction revenue for community programs that address the root causes of crime, would go a long way in alleviating the social problems associated with the system. Or 鈥� even better 鈥� get rid of the system of monetary sanctions altogether.鈥�
This study was funded by a grant from the National Institute for Child Health and Human Development to the 91爆料 Center for Studies in Demography & Ecology, and as part of the eight-state study by Arnold Ventures.
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For more information, contact O鈥橬eill at oneillkk@uw.edu.