There has been a marked increase in the scale and scope of the criminal justice system over the past 40 years, conferring on those that pass through it nearly indelible effects on economic prospects; wage loss, employment discrimination and, more recently, damage to asset accumulation and wealth building have been identified as important influences on reduced economic wellbeing post-charge (Griffith et al., 2019; Martin et al., 2018; Maroto and Sykes, 2020). These consequences are noteworthy because they are not an intentional and deliberate part of criminal punishment- as “collateral consequences,” they are not by design and fall outside what is legally prescribed as punishment. These consequences are also noteworthy for their persistence and unequal effects across demographic groups that are disadvantaged in other social, political, and economic systems.
Concurrently, the American consumer economy has become increasingly financialized, ever more reliant on privately held debt accessed through credit markets that discriminate based on prior market behaviors. As individuals marked by criminal justice engagement navigate this increasingly exclusive consumer economy they may experience a decrease in financial well-being as they struggle to meet rising debt obligations and low cost, high-quality credit tools slip further out of reach. These effects particularly burden those that are disproportionately engaged with the criminal justice system and who are also disadvantaged in financialized markets.
This dissertation explores the relationship between criminal justice contact and financial wellbeing, with an eye towards how the criminal justice and consumer credit systems may interact to produce durable economic hardship. I make five main contributions. First, I examine this relationship in the context of the misdemeanor justice system, an under-studied criminal context responsible for the majority of criminal case processing in the US. Second, I make explicit comparisons between carceral and non-carceral criminal punishments (i.e., jail detention and criminal legal debt, the financial liabilities stemming from fines, fees, and restitution). Third, I examine broader economic consequences of criminal justice contact by focusing on financial well-being as a key outcome. Fourth, I assess changes in financial wellbeing in a misdemeanor context, which is responsible for the majority of criminal case processing in the US and where criminal legal debt (CLD) is most heavily utilized as a criminal punishment. Finally, I make explicit comparisons between carceral and non-carceral criminal punishments (i.e., jail detention and criminal legal debt, the financial liabilities stemming from fines, fees, and restitution), particularly as they co-occur, something that is not well done in existing literature.
My first empirical chapter describes the landscape of criminal legal debt in a sample of misdemeanor criminal cases in Franklin and Hamilton County, Ohio filed between 2015 and 2019. I find that approximately three-quarters of cases with guilty charges in both counties owe criminal legal debt, with average liabilities of $219 in Hamilton County and $326 in Franklin County. Importantly, these liabilities are net of amounts dismissed at judges’ discretion and amounts credited for pretrial detention served, a distinction not made in current literature on criminal legal debt. A series of stepwise multivariate regressions show that legally relevant factors (e.g., offense type) remain the key drivers of the presence and level of criminal legal debt; there is negligible difference in liability levels between Black and non-Black offenders net of these factors, however there are significant differences in liability levels between those with jail sentences and those without them.
My second chapter examines the extent of criminal legal debt payment amongst this sample of offenders and specifically explores whether credit and other financial resources influence payment. I leverage a unique dataset comprised of individual-level linked court, credit, and employment data to present a series of logistic regressions predicting criminal legal debt payment. Results demonstrate that net of employment and other case characteristics, consumer credit is a core resource that increases the probability that those with criminal legal debts will meet those obligations. Specifically, higher ranges of credit score, having an open credit card, and having lower levels of bad debt significantly predict criminal legal debt payment. This extends prior research identifying employment as the main predictor of criminal legal debt payment.
My third empirical chapter traces post-charge changes in financial well-being using measures that reflect four key components of financial wellbeing. I find preliminary support for assertions in the literature that criminal justice engagement is associated with damage to credit, though the size of the changes observed are relatively small. The results of event studies controlling for macroeconomic trends show a link between jail incarceration and greater and more prolonged post-charge decreases in wage levels and financial access. These results align with expectations based on results from studies of felony contexts that show decreases in employment and wage levels for those with jail time. Comparing the event study analysis trajectories of those with each combination of CLD and jail indicate that examinations of CLD that do not account for physical detention may misstate and misinterpret the effects of CLD on financial wellbeing outcomes; CLD alone is not associated with changes on wage indicators but is associated with small increases in the probability of employment and with small decreases in financial access and increases in financial distress. This chapter contributes by examining the broader economic consequences of criminal justice contact by focusing on financial well-being as a key outcome, expanding on its current measurement.