Legal Financial Obligations of Reentering People After Release From Prison: Exploring Predictors of Criminal Justice Debts

Abstract

Legal financial obligations (LFOs) can complicate the already daunting process of reentry for people that are released from prison. The current study uses data to describe and model how LFOs accrued over criminal careers vary across all people released from state prisons in New Jersey in 2009 and 2010 (n = 21,031). Findings indicate that all but 50 people were sentenced to pay some form of LFO, representing approximately $123 million across 560,908 charges amongst the population. Monetary sanctions significantly varied across many background characteristics at a bivariate level, and a multivariate Poisson model indicates that white people, females, and those with longer criminal histories experience heightened LFO burdens across the criminal career. Future research should explore how mechanisms of debt accrual may vary across criminal justice subgroups and how LFOs might be leveraged by prosecutors during plea negotiations.

Keywords

monetary sanctions reentry corrections reintegration

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