By Carmen L. Diaz, Michelle Yang,  Miriam Northcutt Bohmert , Jessica Meckes, Mitchell Farrell,

Cash bail payments are generally imposed to ensure an individual appears in court after arrest. Lesser known is the practice of bond conversion, wherein bond money is held to pay for legal financial obligations if the individual is found guilty. Procedural justice theory is a useful framework for understanding bail processes. Individuals subject to bond conversion may experience distrust towards a system whose policies are not transparent, potentially reducing compliance with the law. We conduct an assessment of statutes relevant to bond conversion for all 50 states and the US Code. Nearly half of all states and the US Code permit bond conversion via statute; statutes most often authorize conversion to pay for fines, costs, and restitution; most do not require the depositor be given notice, do not include language making exceptions for low-income individuals, and do not exclude third parties.

Federal Sentencing Reporter, 34(2-3):119-127

By Keith Finlay, Elizabeth Luh, Matthew Gross and Michael Mueller-Smith.

  We estimate the causal impact of financial sanctions in the U.S. criminal justice system. We utilize a regression discontinuity design and exploit two distinct natural experiments: the abrupt introduction of driver responsibility fees (DRF) in Michigan and Texas. These discontinuously imposed additional surcharges ($300–$6,000) for criminal traffic offenses. Although the policies generated almost $3 billion of debt, we find consistent evidence that the DRFs had no impact on recidivism, earnings, or romantic partners’ outcomes over the next decade. Without evidence of a general or specific deterrence effect and modest success with debt collection, we find little justification for these policies.

Unpublished paper, 2022. 47p.