Bing Lindsay, Pettit Becky, Slavinski Ilya
Lindsay Bing is a doctoral student in the Department of Sociology at the University of Texas at Austin, United States. Becky Pettit is the Barbara Pierce Bush Regents Professor of Liberal Arts in Sociology at the University of Texas at Austin, United States, where she is also a faculty affiliate of the Population Research Center. Ilya Slavinski is clinical assistant professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of Buffalo, United States.
RSF. 2022 Jan;8(2):118-136. doi: 10.7758/rsf.2022.8.2.06. Epub 2022 Jan 1.
Low-level misdemeanor and traffic violations draw tens of millions of people into local courts to pay fines and fees each year, generating billions of dollars in revenue. We examine how standardized legal fines and fees for low-level charges induce disparate treatment and result in disparate impact. Using a mixed-methods approach that incorporates administrative court records as well as interviews with criminal defendants from Texas, we find that although the majority of defendants readily pay for and conclude their case, African American, Latinx, and economically disadvantaged defendants spend disproportionate amounts of money and time resolving theirs. Analysis of criminal case records illustrates the disparate impact of monetary sanctions through the accrual of debt and time spent resolving a charge. Interviews reveal irreconcilable tensions between American ideals of equality in sentencing and the meaning and value of money and time in an increasingly unequal society.
低级别轻罪和交通违规行为每年吸引数千万人进入地方法院缴纳罚款和费用，产生了数十亿美元的收入。我们研究了针对低级别指控的标准化法律罚款和费用如何导致差别对待并产生差别影响。通过采用一种混合方法，该方法纳入了行政法庭记录以及对来自德克萨斯州的刑事被告的访谈，我们发现，尽管大多数被告愿意支付费用并了结他们的案件，但非裔美国人、拉丁裔和经济上处于不利地位的被告在解决案件时花费了不成比例的金钱和时间。对刑事案件记录的分析通过债务累积和解决一项指控所花费的时间，说明了金钱制裁的差别影响。访谈揭示了美国量刑平等理想与在日益不平等的社会中金钱和时间的意义及价值之间不可调和的矛盾。
