By Carl Berry

Electronic monitoring, (EM), or ‘tagging’, is a relatively recent but increasingly used sentencing measure employed by criminal justice agencies across the globe. Dispensed for a range of criminal offences, it typically functions by enabling the construction of a curfew intended to keep users in a designated place for a period of time. Despite its widespread usage, tagging is an under researched and controversial penal sanction beset with numerous difficulties that has garnered as much criticism as praise. The emergence of EM accompanies concerns about increasing uses of surveillance and control within society, yet has been often faulted for failing to practically function. As new technologies transform the criminal justice landscape, recent theoretical perspectives have attempted to theorise measures like EM within criminology. Foremost amongst these positions, actor network theory (or ANT), is a constructivist approach that advocates using observational methods, which, besides challenging many long standing social scientific ideas, controversially contends that material objects have agency and lead ‘fluid lives’. Asserting further that objects are entangled with humans in ‘assemblages of actors’, the position attempts to demonstrate how dynamic interactions within these ‘heterogeneous networks’ lead to successful social ordering. Importantly, it urges researchers to ‘describe’ these ‘hybridised socio-technical systems’ while making as few presumptions as possible; to outline how (or if) they accomplish this. This PhD thesis undertakes an ethnographic investigation of tagging from the position of offenders subject to a range of EM sentences in a location in England dubbed ‘EM City’, and uses a modified version of ANT alongside allied approaches such as postphenomenology. It borrows the administrative criminological concepts of ‘compliance’ and ‘desistance’, to serve as metrics for assessing how tagging leads outcomes of programme completion and criminal de-escalation to sometimes emerge. Additionally, it attempts to understand how variable ‘affects’ (or ‘pains’) associated with its restrictions arise from a somewhat more critical criminological position; however, these are expanded to account for positive, or neutral/ambivalent reactions. The experiences of ‘supporting actors’ who assist EM users are also investigated, before finally re-joining a selection of users post-sentence. It is demonstrated that tagging often becomes an onerous penalty that is sometimes implicated in attaining desired 3 outcomes, but that it also routinely features prohibited activity: led by a range of factors within the ‘chaos’ of many offenders’ lives. The device-system of EM is further asserted to form a ‘carceral actant-ensemble’, which, when ‘bound’ to it, leads ‘hybrid-users’ (or ‘hosts’) to acquire their range of experiences. Ultimately, however, whether tagging derives punitive effects or achieves success in maintaining curfews and reducing offending, is dependent on its enrollment of pre-existing, yet shifting, wider associations within the lives of users. This temporary ‘penal assemblage’ is, additionally, shown to be intersected further by several socio-technical issues: offender support, poverty, ethnicity, and gender, which become enrolled through it.

Bristol, UK: University of Bristol 2021. 378p.

By U.K. Her Majesty's Chief Inspector of Prisons

Our inspections usually take place from Monday to Friday, but prisoners are, of course, detained for seven days a week. Alarming findings from our surveys over the past year indicated that their treatment and conditions in prisons at weekends required closer scrutiny. For some time we have been reporting on the excessive amount of time prisoners still spend locked in prison cells despite the lifting of pandemic restrictions. But this post-COVID torpor is most acute at weekends. Of more than 6,000 prisoners surveyed in 2022–23, 60% of men told us that they spent less than two hours out of their cell on a typical Saturday or Sunday, compared with 42% during the week. This was more than double the proportion in the year before the pandemic (28%). The effect on women in prison was even starker; they were now four times more likely to say that they received less than two hours out of their cells at weekends. Two-thirds of women were unlocked for less than two hours on Saturdays and Sundays, compared with 36% on a typical weekday. To find out more about the experience of prisoners at weekends, we carried out 11 unannounced day-long visits on either a Saturday or a Sunday to 11 adult prisons in England and Wales. The sites were chosen so that a range of different geographical locations and functional types of prison were represented. At each establishment, we asked for regime and staffing information, inspected the different areas of the prison, carried out wing roll checks, conducted focus groups where possible and spoke to prisoners about their experience of the weekend regime. We 2 found that most prisoners were spending at least 21 hours a day locked in their cells at the weekend – in 10 of the 11 prisons we visited, most prisoners could expect to be out of their cells for a maximum of just 2.5 hours a day. In the worst cases, prisoners received only 45 minutes to an hour and, in one prison, were not unlocked at all for one of the two days except to collect their meals. Libraries were closed at weekends, and many prisoners had little to no time at all in the fresh air and could not even have a shower. Even when prisoners were unlocked for a period of association, recreational equipment was broken and out of use, and there were too few activities to engage prisoners constructively. Combined with the severely limited time out of cell on weekdays, prisoners told us that their mental health and well-being was affected. For prisoners who were struggling, there were few opportunities to get the attention of a member of staff without pressing their emergency cell call bell.

London: Her Majesty's Chief Inspector of Prisons (UK), 2023. 20p.

By Nils Christie

Inflicting pain is a serious matter, often at variance with cherished values such as kindness and forgiveness. Attempts might therefore be made to hide the basic character of the activity, or to give various "scientific" reasons for inflicting pain. Such attempts are systematically described in this book, and related to social conditions. None of these attempts to cope with pain seem to be quite satisfactory. It is as if societies in their struggle with penal theories oscillate between attempts to solve an insoluble dilemma. Punishment is used less in some systems than in others. On the basis of examples from systems where pain is rarely inflicted, some general conditions for a low level of pain infliction are formulated. The standpoint is that if pain is to be applied, this should be done without a manipulative purpose and in a social form resembling that which is normal when people are in deep sorrow. Most of the material is from Scandinavia, but the book draws extensively on the crime control debate in the United Kingdom and USA.

Oxford. Martin Robertson. 1982. 117p.

By Theodor Reik

"What is the origin of the sense of collective guilt that plagues Western man? What is the crime for which man suffers an need for punishment? Dr. Theodor Reik, one of the world's leading psychoanalysts, became absorbed in this problem from many discussions with Freud. Over the years he has examined what he considers the basic myth of our civilization: the story of Adam's Fall culminating in the Passion of Christ. With the suspense of a detective story, he untangles the myth in its many expressions, tracing clues in the Bible, using the findings of psychologists and anthropologists as explanatory evidence for a startling conclusion: Man's crime, committed in prehistory, lingering in his motives and haunting him with inevitable remorse, is the sin of pride, of hybris: the killing of God, the ambition to be God.

MYTH AND GUILT opens new and suggestive avenues for understanding the religious and social motives of man and their expression in the human community."

NY. Grosset & Dunlap. 1970. 434p.

Cesare Beccaria. Translation, Introduction and annotations by Graeme R. Newman and Pietro Marongiu.

Cesare Beccaria's influential treatise On Crimes and Punishments is considered a foundational work in the field of criminology. Three major themes of the Enlightenment run through the treatise: the idea that the social contract forms the moral and political basis of the work's reformist zeal; the idea that science supports a dispassionate and reasoned appeal for reforms; and the belief that progress is inextricably bound to science. All three provide the foundation for accepting Beccaria's proposals.

It is virtually impossible to ascertain which of several versions of the treatise that appeared during his lifetime best reflected Beccaria's thoughts. His use of many Enlightenment ideas also makes it difficult to interpret what he has written. While Enlightenment thinkers advocated free men and free minds, there was considerable disagreement as to how this might be achieved, except in the most general terms.

The editors have based this translation on the 1984 Francioni text, the most exhaustive critical Italian edition of Dei delitti e delle pene. This edition is the last that Beccaria personally oversaw and revised. This translation includes an outstanding opening essay by the editors and is a welcome introduction to Beccaria and the beginnings of criminology.

New Brunswick. Transaction. 2016. 191p.

By Alexander Solzhenitsyn. Translated from the Russian by Ralph Parker.

One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich is an undisputed classic of contemporary literature. First published (in censored form) in the Soviet journal Novy Mir in 1962, it is the story of labor-camp inmate Ivan Denisovich Shukhov as he struggles to maintain his dignity in the face of communist oppression. On every page of this graphic depiction of Ivan Denisovich's struggles, the pain of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's own decade-long experience in the gulag is apparent—which makes its ultimate tribute to one man's will to triumph over relentless dehumanization all the more moving.

An unforgettable portrait of the entire world of Stalin's forced-work camps, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich is one of the most extraordinary literary works to have emerged from the Soviet Union. The first of Solzhenitsyn's novels to be published, it forced both the Soviet Union and the West to confront the Soviet's human rights record, and the novel was specifically mentioned in the presentation speech when Solzhenitsyn was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1970. Above all, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich establishes Solzhenitsyn's stature as "a literary genius whose talent matches that of Dostoevsky, Turgenev, Tolstoy" (Harrison Salisbury, The New York Times).

This unexpurgated, widely acclaimed translation by H. T. Willetts is the only translation authorized by Solzhenitsyn himself.

NY. E.P. Dutton. Signet. 1963. 155p.

By David Garland

This analysis of the punishment of offenders argues that the social meaning of punishment is poorly understood and needs to be explored if we are to discover ways of punishing that match our social ideals better than current punishments do.

The analysis emphasizes that the institutional framework of modern penology tends to narrow our perceptions of punishment and also to obscure its social ramifications. Thus, it is crucial to understand the major theoretical perspectives on punishment. These include Durkheim's emphasis on punishment's moral effects, Foucault's view that disciplinary punishments operate as power-knowledge mechanisms within broader strategies of domination, the cultural approach of Robert Elias, and the Marxist perspective. The analysis concludes that each approach represents an incomplete, but useful perspective on different aspects of punishment and that future discussions should consider punishment to be a complex social institution that should be analyzed as part of mainstream sociology.

Chicago. The University of Chicago Press, 1990. 308p.

By Christopher Hibbert

The Roots of Evil: A Social History of Crime and Punishment is a book written by Christopher Hibbert in 1963 which traces the development of the social justice system, mostly from an English perspective, though information about the continent and the United States is also included.

Cruel punishments have an inevitable tendency to produce cruelty...

— Sir Samuel Romilly 1813

With this conclusion, Hibbert traces the development and decline of cruel punishments, the guillotine in France and the modern prison in England, which still used hanging when the book was first published.[1] The chapter Causes and Cures contains the salient point that "There seems, indeed, no surer way of keeping a boy [or girl] from a life of crime than providing him with a happy and worthwhile childhood in a family which loves him and which he loves",[2] and suggests that while "a crime is only a crime when a law ... makes it so", pointing out that by the nineteenth century nine of the ten laws which Hebraic law punished with stoning "had ceased to be offences in civilized European societies".[3] Although "Drink and drugs and speed and sex are exciting, and so is crime and in cities the opportunity for crime are extensive and the rewards are high, the chances of escape are greater and most of the police are overworked and some of them may be corruptible."[4] While it is suggested that to change crime requires changing society, the last sentence of the chapter is "No completely satisfactory answers have yet been found."[5]

The last chapter, Progress and Palindrome, points out that "the solution lies not in making punishments more severe, but in making them more certain and in relating them to each individual criminal, so that if he is reformable he may be reformed."[6] Also, "there are germs of evil in the best of us and seeds of good in the worst",[7] and there are no quick and inexpensive solutions to the problem of crime, which requires changing the soil, more than changing the seeds.

Boston. Little Brown. 499p.1963.

Edited by O. Hayden Griffin III and Vanessa H. Woodward

The Routledge Handbook of Corrections in the United States brings together original contributions from leading scholars in criminology and criminal justice that provide an in-depth, state-of-the-art look at the most important topics in corrections. The book discusses the foundations of corrections in the United States, philosophical issues that have guided historical movements in corrections, different types of punishment and supervision, trends in incarceration, issues affecting race, ethnicity, and special populations in corrections, and a variety of other emerging issues.

This book scrutinizes innovative community programs as well as more traditional sanctions, and exposes the key issues and debates surrounding the correctional process in the United States. Among other important topics, selections address the inherent discrimination within the system, special issues surrounding certain populations, and the utilization of the death penalty as the ultimate punishment. This book serves as an essential reference for academicians and practitioners working in corrections and related agencies, as well as for students taking courses in criminal justice, criminology, and related subjects.

NY. Routledge. 2018. 516p.

By John H. Langbein

In Torture and the Law of Proof John H. Langbein explores the world of the thumbscrew and the rack, engines of torture authorized for investigating crime in European legal systems from medieval times until well into the eighteenth century. Drawing on juristic literature and legal records, Langbein's book, first published in 1977, remains the definitive account of how European legal systems became dependent on the use of torture in their routine criminal procedures, and how they eventually worked themselves free of it.

The book has recently taken on an eerie relevance as a consequence of controversial American and British interrogation practices in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. In a new introduction, Langbein contrasts the "new" law of torture with the older European law and offers some pointed lessons about the difficulty of reconciling coercion with accurate investigation. Embellished with fascinating illustrations of torture devices taken from an eighteenth-century criminal code, this crisply written account will engage all those interested in torture's remarkable grip on European legal history.

Chicago. he University of Chicago Press. 1976. 230p.

By Graeme R. Newman

The practice of mass incarceration has come under increasing criticism by criminologists and corrections experts who, nevertheless, find themselves at a loss when it comes to offering credible, practical, and humane alternatives. In Civilization and Barbarism, Graeme R. Newman argues this impasse has arisen from a refusal to confront the original essence of punishment, namely, that in some sense it must be painful. He begins with an exposition of the traditional philosophical justifications for punishment and then provides a history of criminal punishment. He shows how, over time, the West abandoned short-term corporal punishment in favor of longer-term incarceration, justifying a massive bureaucratic prison complex as scientific and civilized. Newman compels the reader to confront the biases embedded in this model and the impossibility of defending prisons as a civilized form of punishment. A groundbreaking work that challenges the received wisdom of “corrections,” Civilization and Barbarism asks readers to reconsider moderate corporal punishment as an alternative to prison and, for the most serious offenders, forms of incapacitation without prison.

The book also features two helpful appendixes: a list of debating points, with common criticisms and their rebuttals, and a chronology of civilized punishments.

Albany NY. SUNY Press. 2019. 272p.

NOTE: This file is a prepublication proof and may contain occasional errors.

The 1970's have seen almost every aspect of parole decisionmaking come under sustained legal and political attack. Within a few years following the 1972 Morrissey decision, court rulings were handed down requiring a variety of due-process procedures for such matters as rescinding an unexecuted parole, increasing a term, granting a parole, and requiring disclosure of records. At the same time, parole boards, as principal actors in the sentencing process, were a target of political attack by legislators, leading academicians, criminal justice officials, and the public for inequities and lack of sentencing certainty produced by release decisions characterized as capricious and arbitrary. As a consequence of these pressures, legislators have taken action over the last 4 years to constrict the amount of discretion exercised by parole boards in many different areas, including decisions to parole, due-process procedures governing parole hearings and revocations, and disclosure of certain records. State legislatures have been especially concerned with the issue of sentencing. Statutes designed to modify, replace, or selectively prohibit indeterminate sentencing have dominated criminal justice legislative agendas. As 1980 closed, 12 States had passed various types of determinate sentencing laws to replace indeterminate statutes. Over the last 4 years, five States have created contract parole programs, and five passed laws establishing specific parole guidelines, in each case an effort to improve the exercise of indeterminancy. The most common response to dissatisfaction with paroling practices has been the passage of some form of mandatory sentencing. Thirty-seven States enacted this type of legislation, which prohibits indeterminate sentencing for specified categories of offenses/offenders. The trends for the near future are suggested by recent legislative history: States will continue to pass laws to limit the use of discretion by parole boards

By ACLU Smart Justice Nebraska

Fairness and freedom should not depend on how much money an individual possesses. Nebraskans who are struggling financially should have the same experience in the legal system as anyone else. Yet today, despite United States Supreme Court precedent and safeguards at the federal and state level, Nebraskans are still routinely confined simply because they lack the resources to pay fines or post bail or bond. This report reveals the findings of an intensive ACLU of Nebraska court watching project, the first of its scope in the state. ACLU staff and interns spent roughly three months in 2022 observing bail and sentencing hearings to document how recent reforms from the Nebraska Legislature — part of the nationwide movement to reform modern-day debtors’ prisons — are being implemented. What this project uncovered is a cause for concern. Observations from a combined 2,300+ bail and sentencing hearings show systemic disregard of laws meant to protect Nebraskans who are struggling financially. They also show continued reflexive practices that perpetuate a modern “debtors’ prison,” where Nebraskans are routinely confined simply because they cannot afford to post cash bail or pay fees or fines. This publication discusses the legal framework behind bail, fees and fines in Nebraska’s criminal legal system before detailing the court watching project’s findings and offering recommendations for reform. As readers progress through its pages, it is critical to remember that if the system were functioning as the Constitution and state law envision, in most cases, any person assigned cash bail or assessed a cou  

Lincoln, NE: American Civil Liberties Union - Nebraska, 2022. 36p.

By Elsa Augustine, Slissa Skog, Johanna Lacoe and Steven Raphael

Criminal justice reform has gained bipartisan support at a national level in recent years. One common reform practice is to divert some defendants from traditional criminal justice proceedings to alternative programs that provide social services or attempt to address underlying drivers of criminal justice involvement. San Francisco referred over 16,000 individuals between 2008 and 2018 through the Collaborative Courts and Pretrial Diversion programs; overall one quarter of filed criminal cases were referred to diversion. A larger share of new filings were referred to diversion in recent years as San Francisco's filing rates decreased at a faster pace than the diversion referral rate. In keeping with the general criminal justice-involved population in San Francisco, individuals referred to diversion programs were more likely to be young men of color than the average San Franciscan. People who were referred to diversion programs had longer criminal justice histories than those whose cases were not referred, but were otherwise demographically similar. Referred cases had lower conviction rates than nondiverted cases, but referred individuals had higher rates of subsequent criminal justice contact, on average. Individuals who were re-arrested after a diversion referral were typically arrested on less severe offenses than the original offenses. While this paper does not present causal estimates of the effects of diversion programs, future research will estimate the impacts of a referral to diversion on case outcomes and subsequent criminal justice contact, among other outcomes.

Los Angeles: California Policy Lab, 2020. 36p

By Jason Rydberg, Rebecca Stone, Christine C. Kwiatkowski

Many areas of the United States are experiencing an epidemic of drug overdose deaths, often involving opioids. In 2017, there were 70,237 drug overdose deaths in the United States, a rate 9.6% higher than 2016. 47,600 of these deaths involved an opioid (National Institute on Drug Abuse [NIDA], 2019). The opioid overdose epidemic has been described as a series of “waves.” The first wave began with increased prescribing of opioid analgesics in the 1990s driving an increase in prescription opioid overdose deaths. The second wave, starting around 2010, was characterized by a rapid increase in overdose deaths involving heroin. Beginning in 2013 and continuing today, many areas of the country are experiencing the “third wave” of the epidemic, characterized by a significant increase in overdose deaths involving synthetic opioids like fentanyl (Centers for Disease Control [CDC], 2018). Some experts have indicated that a coming “fourth wave” may be characterized by overdose deaths related to polysubstance use including opioids, cocaine, and psychostimulants (e.g. methamphetamine). Beyond these general trends, research shows that the nature of the overdose epidemic is region-specific. It could be said that there is not one overdose epidemic, but many epidemics that vary substantially by a region’s economic and demographic characteristics. This “geography of the U.S. opioid overdose crisis” was recently mapped by Shannon Monnat and colleagues (2019), who found that overall drug mortality rates are higher in counties characterized by more economic disadvantage, more blue-collar and service employment, and higher opioid-prescribing rates. Specifically, Michigan shows a pattern of increasing heroin-involved deaths in the west and south-west areas of the state, a mixture of emerging heroin, prescription opioids, and “synthetic+” (synthetic opioids alone or in combination with other opioids) in the rural north, and a “syndemic” (all types of opioids and combinations) in the southeast. In the Upper Peninsula, we see high and emerging heroin counties along the Wisconsin border, and synthetic+ counties along the peninsula’s eastern tip. These patterns map to economic and demographic patterns across Michigan. “Urban professional” areas are related to rapidly rising probability of “syndemic” classification (e.g. the greater Detroit area). Blue-collar worker presence is associated with the emerging heroin and syndemic classes, and service economy areas (e.g. the north half of the state) are associated with rising probability of membership in all five opioid classes (high prescription opioid, emerging heroin, high heroin, synthetic+, and syndemic). The prescription opioid class counties are more likely to be rural, economically disadvantaged, and have high scores on blue-collar and service economy indices. These results make it clear that there is no single solution to the overdose crisis. To understand and, importantly, to effectively respond to the crisis and reduce opioid-related mortality, we must have an in-depth understanding of the crisis in Michigan, both from the perspective of public health and of law enforcement. This research draws on data from a number of different sources to triangulate a comprehensive picture of illegal drug activity in the State of Michigan. These sources are leveraged to combine information gathered from law enforcement sources, prescription monitoring, mortality and vital statistics, and community demographics.

East Lansing, MI: Michigan State University, Michigan Justice Statistics Center, School of Criminal Justice 2019. 55p

By Aurelie Ouss and Megan T. Stevenson

Dozens of jurisdictions across the country are engaging in bail reform, but there are concerns that reducing monetary incentives will increase pretrial misconduct. We provide new evidence on this question by evaluating a prosecutor-led bail reform in Philadelphia. In February 2018, Philadelphia’s district attorney announced that his office would no longer request monetary bail for defendants charged with certain eligible offenses. This was an advisory change; bail magistrates retained final say. Using a difference-in-differences approach we find that this policy led to a 22% increase in the likelihood a defendant will be released with no monetary or supervisory conditions, but had no impact on pretrial detention. This provides a unique opportunity to evaluate the primary justification for cash bail: that it provides incentive for released defendants to appear in court. We find no evidence that cash bail or pretrial supervision has a deterrent effect on failure-to-appear or pretrial crime. We argue that one explanation is that asymmetric reputational penalties cause magistrates to set bail higher than necessary. In addition, our study provides evidence on the role of discretion within criminal justice reform. We find that discretion led to racial disparities in implementation, and diluted the impacts of the reform.

Working Paper, 2022. 59p

By Viet Nguyen

Criminal records can produce collateral consequences that affect access to employment, housing, and other outcomes. Adverse collateral consequences may be particularly acute for adults with limited professional capital and social networks. In recent years, there has been an expansion of prosecutor-led diversion programs that attempt to curb the effect of collateral consequences. However, the expansion of diversion programs may lead to net-widening if these programs simply substitute for cases that would have otherwise been dismissed. This study assesses the impact of an adult, misdemeanor diversion program on long-term recidivism outcomes and the future amount of court-imposed fees and sanctions. The misdemeanor diversion program reduced reconviction rates but produced a short-term net-widening effect by drawing in defendants whose cases would normally have been dismissed. The net-widening effects were curtailed over the longer term as the program significantly increased expungement rates. The results were driven by younger defendants. Implications of this study for theories of criminal desistance and policies around expunging criminal records are discussed.

Philadelphia: Working Paper, University of Pennsylvania, Criminology2022. 43p.

By John Irwin

Combining extensive interviews with his own experience as an inmate, John Irwin constructs a powerful and graphic description of the big-city jail. Unlike prisons, which incarcerate convicted felons, jails primarily confine arrested persons not yet charged or convicted of any serious crime. Irwin argues that jail disorients and degrades and instead of controlling the disreputable, actually increases their number by helping to indoctrinate new recruits to the rabble class. In a forceful conclusion, Irwin addresses the issue of jail reform and the matter of social control demanded by society.

Los Angeles, California University of California Press, Ltd. 1985. 160p.

By Robert Hughes

(Mr Hughes) has felt his way back into the past with passion and insight, mined an enormous mass of material and welded the results of his researches into a commanding narrative... Already widely known as an art critic, he now reveals his formidable gifts as a social htstonan "           —The New York Times

'Although The Fatal Shore is both lengthy and scholarly, it is alio fun to read One of Hughes's greatest gifts as a joumalist has always been his ability to express senous themes in accessible language. In his marvelous new history, he brings convict Australia to life both in his own words and those of its inhabitants……The idiosyncratic voices of the individual convicts he quotes imbue the narrative with the spark and savor of real life in all its chaotic, intimate detail. This kind of history is as exciting and entertaining as a good novel.” — Chicago Sun-Times

NY. Vintage. 1988. 743p.

By Alabama Apppleseed

We surveyed 980 Alabamians from 41 counties about their experience with court debt, including 879 people who owed money themselves and 101 people who were paying debt for others. Of the people who owed money themselves, we found: More than eight in ten gave up necessities like rent, food, medical bills, car payments, and child support, in order to pay down their court debt. Almost four in ten admitted to having committed at least one crime to pay on their court debt. One in five people whose only previous offenses were traffic violations admitted to committing more serious offenses, including felonies, to pay off their traffic tickets. The most common offense committed to pay off court debt was selling drugs, followed by stealing and sex work. Survey respondents also admitted to passing bad checks, gambling, robbery, selling food stamps, and selling stolen items. 44% used payday or title loans to cover court debt. Almost two-thirds received money or food assistance from a faith-based charity or church that they would not have had to request if they weren’t paying court debt. Almost seven in ten were at some point declared indigent by a court, and by almost every measure, indigent survey-takers were treated more harshly than their non-indigent peers. They were more likely to have been turned down for or kicked out of diversion programs for financial reasons, more likely to have their debt increased, be threatened with jail, or actually be jailed for non-payment of court debt. Almost half of the people who took our survey did not think they would ever be able to pay what they owe. The 101 people who took our survey who were paying debt for other people (usually family members) were more likely to be middle-aged African-American women than to belong to any other demographic group. While others their age were saving money for retirement, helping their children with college or other expenses, paying down mortgages, or taking vacations, these African-American women were disproportionately burdened with paying court debt for their families.

Montgomery, AL: Alabama Appleseed Center for Law and Justice, 2018. 66p.