Debtors' Blocks: How Monetary Sanctions Make Between-neighborhood Racial and Economic Inequalities Worse

Organized abandonment under racial capitalism: Measuring accountable actors of structural racism for public health research and action

Understanding the shifting nature of structural racism historically and across institutions is vital for effective action towards racial health equity. While public health research on structural racism is rapidly increasing, most studies are missing the interdependence of policies and institutional practices over time that shape power imbalances and lead to entrenched health inequities. Here, we discuss Ruth Wilson Gilmore's concept of organized abandonment - the intentional disinvestment in communities which, in turn, creates opportunities for extraction, revenue generation, and carceral enforcement to fill the cracks of a compromised social infrastructure - to encourage action-oriented public health research that is grounded in history and an understanding of racial capitalism. We present a case example using publicly-available data on redlining, gentrification and policing in Seattle, Washington. We mapped the intersections of redlining and gentrification and estimated their neighborhood-level association with police activity using Bayesian spatial Poisson regression models. We found that histories of racist housing policies like redlining and processes of gentrification are interdependent and shape contemporary neighborhood racial and economic segregation and police activity. Compared to structurally advantaged neighborhoods, police stops were higher in neighborhoods that were 1) historically disinvested (i.e. redlined) and remain low-income and structurally disadvantaged and 2) formerly industrial and business districts that were not redlined and are now gentrified. Notably, we found that policing practices were significantly more intensive in neighborhoods that were both high redlined and gentrified. Together, these findings illustrate how the place-based racialized processes of dispossession, displacement and policing are deeply intertwined to maintain racial capitalism. Our findings also highlight the importance of examining multiple racialized processes simultaneously to fill critical gaps in the existing literature that are necessary for sustainable solutions to address structural racism.

The long reach of juvenile and criminal legal debt: How monetary sanctions shape legal cynicism and adultification

Previous research has established the deleterious long-term effects of juvenile legal system involvement such as increased risk of criminal legal system involvement as adults. This paper examines retrospective accounts of how that process occurs by exploring the following research question: how does one's involvement in the juvenile legal system, which includes monetary sanctions, shape peoples' views of law and legal institutions and with what consequences? Based on 19 interviews with adults who have legal debt from both juvenile and criminal legal systems, the paper focuses on four aspects of the long-reaching effects of juvenile legal involvement and juvenile monetary sanctions: legal socialization, adultification, legal cynicism, and future aspirations. In all these aspects, we show the organizational constraints that shape individuals' perspectives about the law and the impact of monetary sanctions on their lives. In doing so, the paper shows how monetary sanctions associated with juvenile cases add to the cumulative disadvantage of legal system involvement.

Clearing cannabis criminal records: A survey of criminal record expungement availability and accessibility among US States and Washington DC that decriminalized or legalized cannabis

BACKGROUND

In 2022, despite expanding state-level legalization, cannabis remained illegal at the federal level, driving drug offenses, and contact with the justice system. Cannabis criminalization disproportionately impacts minorities, and criminal records carry negative economic, health, and social consequences. Legalization prevents future criminalization but fails to assist existing record-holders. We surveyed 39 states and Washington DC where cannabis was decriminalized or legalized to determine record expungement availability and accessibility for cannabis offenders.

METHODS

We performed a retrospective, qualitative survey of state expungement laws allowing record sealing or record destruction where cannabis use was decriminalized or legalized. Statutes were collected between February 25, 2021, and August 25, 2022, from state websites or NexisUni. We collected pardon information for two states from online state government resources. Materials were coded in Atlas.ti to determine if states had general, cannabis, and other drug conviction expungement regimes, petitions, or automated systems, waiting periods, and financial requirements. Codes were developed via inductive and iterative coding of materials.

RESULTS

Among places surveyed, 36 provided any conviction expungement, 34 provided general relief, 21 offered cannabis-specific relief, and 11 offered general drug relief, nonexclusively. Most states used petitions. Thirty-three general and 7 cannabis-specific programs required waiting periods. Nineteen general and 4 cannabis programs imposed administrative fees, and 16 general and one cannabis-specific program required legal financial obligations to be paid.

CONCLUSION

Among the 39 states and Washington DC that decriminalized or legalized cannabis and offered expungement, more states relied on general rather than cannabis-specific systems, and the majority of these required record holders to petition for relief and imposed waiting periods and financial requirements. Research is needed to determine if automating expungement, reducing or eliminating waiting periods, and eliminating financial requirements may expand record relief for former cannabis offenders.

Payday lenders and premature mortality

Relationships between debt and poor health are worrisome as access to expensive credit expands and population health worsens along certain metrics. We focus on payday lenders as one type of expensive credit and investigate the spatial relationships between lender storefronts and premature mortality rates. We combine causes of death data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and payday lender locations at the county-level in the United States between 2000 and 2017. After accounting for county socioeconomic and demographic characteristics, the local presence of payday lenders is associated with an increased incidence risk of all-cause and specific-cause premature mortality. State regulations may attenuate these relationships, which provides insights on policy strategies to mitigate health impacts.

Monetary Sanctions as Chronic and Acute Health Stressors: The Emotional Strain of People Who Owe Court Fines and Fees

In this article, we explore the experiences of people who carry monetary sanction (or penal) debt across eight U.S. states. Using 519 interviews with people sentenced to fines and fees, we analyze the mental and emotional aspects of their experiences. Situating our analysis within research on the social determinants of health and the stress universe, we suggest that monetary sanctions create an overwhelmingly palpable sense of fear, frustration, anxiety, and despair. We theorize the ways in which monetary sanctions function as both acute and chronic health stressors for people who are unable to pay off their debts, highlight the mechanisms linking penal debt with mental and emotional burdens, and generalize our findings using national data from the U.S. Federal Reserve. We find that the system of monetary sanctions generates a great deal of stress and strain that becomes an internalized punishment affecting many realms of people's lives.