Seminar
Abstract: Dr. Harris' recent research has illustrated the various ways the United States criminal justice system imposes monetary sanctions to people committed of felony offenses. This sentencing option includes fines, fees and restitution, and also court user fees (such as the costs associated with public defense, paper work, and juries). This work shows that, as a result of their indigence, offenders remain closely connected to the surveillance and sanctioning of criminal justice agents, but also to the stigmatizing effects of their original felony conviction. Informed by this research, the current talk will present recently collected observational data of Superior Court sentencing and violation hearings and interview data with judges, attorneys and county clerks to illustrate 1) the various ways counties (operating under the same state statute) implement financial penalties to felony convicts and sanction those labeled as "willful" non-payers, and 2) will discuss how variations in organizational and political structure impact these sentencing practices. Her analysis illustrates how court actors interpret the state statue as well as their defendants' social and legal characteristics, and examines the informal mechanisms individual counties have developed to assess, manage and sanction defendants who carry legal debt.
This presentation summarizes a chapter from Dr. Harris' solo-authored book project that documents how the criminal justice system differentially impacts poor Americans involved with the criminal justice system, and disproportionately people of color. This multi-method study produces a detailed and analytic story about the contemporary use of monetary sanctions in the U.S., with Washington State as the case study, and situates this work within a broader discussion about the systemic ways in which U.S. institutions have removed citizenship rights, stigmatized and marginalized its poor and people of color.