The long-term impact of debt relief for indigent defendants in a misdemeanor court
Lindsay Bing, Rebecca Goldstein, Helen Ho, Devah Pager, Bruce Western · 2024
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Description
Court fines and fees can trap poor defendants in a cycle of warrants and jail even without any new crime. Lindsay Bing, Rebecca Goldstein, Helen Ho, Devah Pager, and Bruce Western test what happens when that debt is simply wiped away, in this 2024 study from Oklahoma County. Six hundred and six people found guilty of misdemeanors took part in an experiment.
By lottery, some participants had all current and past court fines and fees for county charges forgiven, while others kept their debt. Twenty-one months later the forgiven group had fewer jail bookings, and the gap held over forty-four months of follow-up. The debt did not change signs of fresh lawbreaking. The control group was instead rearrested more, mainly on warrants for nonpayment. The authors read legal debt as a quiet engine of punishment.
Catalog record
| CREATOR | Lindsay Bing, Rebecca Goldstein, Helen Ho, Devah Pager, Bruce Western |
|---|---|
| YEAR | 2024 |
| COLLECTION | PAPERS |
| FORMAT | TXT |
| FILE SIZE | 27 KB |
| VERSION | 1.0 |
| LICENSE | CC BY 4.0 |
| RIGHTS | CC BY |
| SOURCE | Europe PMC |