Skip to main content

Main menu

  • Foundation Website
  • Journal Home
  • Issues
    • Current Issue
    • All Issues
    • Future Issues
  • For Authors and Editors
    • Overview of RSF & How to Propose an Issue
    • RSF Style and Submission Guidelines
    • Article Submission Checklist
    • Permission Request
    • Terms of Contributor Agreement Form and Transfer of Copyright
    • RSF Contributor Agreement Form
    • Issue Editors' Agreement Form
  • About the Journal
    • Mission Statement
    • Editorial Board
    • Comments and Replies Policy
    • Journal Code of Ethics
    • Current Calls for Articles
    • Closed Calls for Articles
    • Abstracting and Indexing
    • Privacy Policy
    • Copyright and ISSN Information
    • Terms of Use
    • Contact Us
  • Publications
    • rsf

User menu

  • Log in

Search

  • Advanced search
RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences
  • Publications
    • rsf
  • Log in
RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences

Advanced Search

  • Foundation Website
  • Journal Home
  • Issues
    • Current Issue
    • All Issues
    • Future Issues
  • For Authors and Editors
    • Overview of RSF & How to Propose an Issue
    • RSF Style and Submission Guidelines
    • Article Submission Checklist
    • Permission Request
    • Terms of Contributor Agreement Form and Transfer of Copyright
    • RSF Contributor Agreement Form
    • Issue Editors' Agreement Form
  • About the Journal
    • Mission Statement
    • Editorial Board
    • Comments and Replies Policy
    • Journal Code of Ethics
    • Current Calls for Articles
    • Closed Calls for Articles
    • Abstracting and Indexing
    • Privacy Policy
    • Copyright and ISSN Information
    • Terms of Use
    • Contact Us
  • Follow rsf on Twitter
  • Visit rsf on Facebook
  • Follow rsf on Google Plus
Research Article
Open Access

Beyond the Penal Code: The Legal Capacity of Monetary Sanctions in the Corpus of California Law

Anjuli Verma, Bryan L. Sykes
RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences January 2022, 8 (1) 36-62; DOI: https://doi.org/10.7758/RSF.2022.8.1.02
Anjuli Verma
aAssistant professor of politics at the University of California, Santa Cruz, United States, where she also teaches in the interdisciplinary Legal Studies Program
  • Find this author on Google Scholar
  • Find this author on PubMed
  • Search for this author on this site
  • ORCID record for Anjuli Verma
Bryan L. Sykes
bChancellor’s Fellow, an Inclusive Excellence Term Chair Professor, and associate professor of criminology, law, and society at the University of California, Irvine, United States, with courtesy appointments in the Departments of Sociology and Public Health
  • Find this author on Google Scholar
  • Find this author on PubMed
  • Search for this author on this site
  • ORCID record for Bryan L. Sykes
  • Article
  • Figures & Data
  • References
  • Info & Metrics
  • PDF
Loading

REFERENCES

  1. ↵
    1. Appel, Hannah,
    2. Sa Whitley, and
    3. Caitlin Kline
    . 2019. The Power of Debt: Identity and Collective Action in the Age of Finance. Los Angeles: University of California Institute on Inequality and Democracy, the Shuttleworth Foundation, and the Debt Collective.
  2. ↵
    1. Bannon, Alicia,
    2. Mitali Nagrecha, and
    3. Rebeka Diller
    . 2010. Criminal Justice Debt: A Barrier to Reentry. New York: Brennan Center for Justice.
  3. ↵
    1. Barker, Vanessa
    . 2006. “The Politics of Punishing: Building a State Governance Theory of American Imprisonment Variation.” Punishment & Society 8(1): 5–32.
    OpenUrlCrossRefWeb of Science
  4. ↵
    1. Barker, Vanessa
    . 2009. The Politics of Imprisonment: How the Democratic Process Shapes the Way America Punishes Offenders. New York: Oxford University Press.
  5. ↵
    1. Beckett, Katherine, and
    2. Naomi Murakawa
    . 2012. “Mapping the Shadow Carceral State: Toward an Institutionally Capacious Approach to Punishment.” Theoretical Criminology 16(2): 221–44.
    OpenUrlCrossRefWeb of Science
  6. ↵
    1. Bing, Lindsay,
    2. Becky Pettit, and
    3. Ilya Slavinski
    . 2022. “Incomparable Punishments: How Economic Inequality Contributes to the Disparate Impact of Legal Fines and Fees.” RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences 8(2): 118–36. DOI: https://doi.org/10.7758/RSF.2022.8.2.06.
    OpenUrl
  7. ↵
    1. Bourdieu, Pierre
    . 2014. On the State: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1989–1992. Malden, Mass.: Polity Press.
  8. ↵
    1. Brayne, Sarah
    . 2014. “Surveillance and System Avoidance: Criminal Justice Contact and Institutional Attachment.” American Sociological Review 79(3): 367–91.
    OpenUrlCrossRefWeb of Science
  9. ↵
    1. Brown, Edmund G., Jr..
    2018. “State of the State Address.” Sacramento: California Governor’s Library. Accessed March 8, 2021. https://governors.library.ca.gov/addresses/s_39-JBrown7.html.
    1. California Legislative Information (CLI)
    . 2021. Sacramento: State of California Office of Legislative Counsel. https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes.xhtml. Accessed September 1, 2021.
  10. ↵
    1. Child Welfare Information Gateway
    . 2020. Foster Care Statistics 2018. Washington: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Administration for Children and Families, Children’s Bureau. Accessed March 9, 2021. https://www.childwelfare.gov/pubPDFs/foster.pdf.
  11. ↵
    1. Coffee, John C., Jr..
    1992. “Paradigms Lost: The Blurring of the Criminal and Civil Law—and What Can Be Done About It.” Yale Law Journal 101(8): 1875–894.
    OpenUrl
  12. ↵
    1. Collateral Consequences Resource Center
    . 2019. “California Compilation of Collateral Consequences.” Accessed August 6, 2021. http://california.ccresourcecenter.org/consequence-search.
  13. ↵
    1. Committee on Revision of the Penal Code
    . 2020. Video Archives: Meeting, September 17, 2020. 1:24:14–1:24:50. Sacramento: California Law Revision Commission. Accessed July 21, 2021. http://www.clrc.ca.gov/CRPC/Meetings/Video.html.
  14. ↵
    1. Committee on Revision of the Penal Code
    . 2021. Annual Report and Recommendations, 2020. Sacramento: California Law Revision Commission. Accessed March 8, 2021. http://www.clrc.ca.gov/CRPC/Pub/Reports/CRPC_AR2020.pdf.
  15. ↵
    1. Dahaghi, Kevin
    . 2017. “Punishment and Penal Activity: The Expansion of Legal Fines and Fees in Texas from 1985–2015.” M.A. thesis, University of Texas at Austin.
  16. ↵
    1. Evans, Douglas N
    . 2014. The Debt Penalty: Exposing the Financial Barriers of Offender Reintegration. New York: John Jay College of Criminal Justice.
  17. ↵
    1. Fernandes, April D.,
    2. Brittany Friedman, and
    3. Gabriela Kirk
    . 2022. “The ‘Damaged’ State vs. the ‘Willful’ Nonpayer: Constructing Damage, Harm, and Willfulness Through Pay-to-Stay Lawsuits,” RSF: Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences 8(1): 82–105. DOI: https://doi.org/10.7758/RSF.2022.8.1.04.
    OpenUrl
  18. ↵
    1. Field, David Dudley
    . 1890. “Codification.” American Law Review 20: 1.
    OpenUrl
  19. ↵
    1. Foucault, Michel
    . 1970. The Order of Things: An Archeology of the Human Sciences, 2nd ed. New York: Routledge.
  20. ↵
    1. Foucault, Michel
    . 1977. Discipline & Punish: The Birth of the Prison, translated by Alan Sheridan. New York: Vintage Books.
  21. ↵
    1. Foucault, Michel
    . 2007. Security, Territory, Population: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1977–78. New York: Springer.
  22. ↵
    1. Friedman, Brittany, and
    2. Mary Pattillo
    . 2019. “Statutory Inequality: The Logics of Monetary Sanctions in State Law.” RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences 5(10): 173–96. DOI: https://doi.org/10.7758/RSF.2019.5.1.08.
    OpenUrlCrossRef
  23. ↵
    1. Garland, David
    . 1990. Punishment and Modern Society. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
  24. ↵
    1. Goffman, Alice
    . 2009. “On the Run: Wanted Men in a Philadelphia Ghetto.” American Sociological Review 74(3): 339–57.
    OpenUrlCrossRefWeb of Science
  25. ↵
    1. Goffman, Alice
    . 2015. On the Run: Fugitive Life in an American City. New York: Picador.
  26. ↵
    1. Gordon, Margaret A., and
    2. Daniel Glaser
    . 1991. “The Use and Effects of Financial Penalties in Municipal Courts.” Criminology 29(4): 651–76.
    OpenUrlCrossRefWeb of Science
  27. ↵
    1. Gould, Jon B., and
    2. Scott Barclay
    . 2012. “Mind the Gap: The Place of Gap Studies in Sociolegal Scholarship.” Annual Review of Law and Social Science 8(1): 323–35.
    OpenUrlCrossRef
  28. ↵
    1. Graeber, David
    . 2011. Debt: The First 5,000 Years. Brookeville, N.Y.: Melville House.
  29. ↵
    1. Harris, Alexes
    . 2016. A Pound of Flesh: Monetary Sanctions for the Poor. New York: Russell Sage Foundation.
  30. ↵
    1. Harris, Alexes,
    2. Heather Evans, and
    3. Katherine Beckett
    . 2010. “Drawing Blood from Stones: Legal Debt and Social Inequality in the Contemporary United States.” American Journal of Sociology 115(6): 1753–799.
    OpenUrlCrossRef
  31. ↵
    1. Harris, Alexes,
    2. Heather Evans, and
    3. Katherine Beckett
    . 2011. “Courtesy Stigma and Monetary Sanctions: Toward a Socio-Cultural Theory of Punishment.” American Sociological Review 76(2): 1–31.
    OpenUrlCrossRefWeb of Science
    1. Harris, Alexes,
    2. Beth Huebner,
    3. Karin Martin.
    4. Mary Pattillo,
    5. Becky Pettit,
    6. Sarah Shanon,
    7. Bryan L. Sykes.
    8. Chris Uggen, and
    9. April Fernandes
    . 2017. “Monetary Sanctions in the Criminal Justice System: A Review of Law and Policy in California, Georgia, Illinois, Minnesota, Missouri, New York, North Carolina, Texas, and Washington.” Report. Accessed September 1, 2021. http://www.monetarysanctions.org/index.php/2017/04/20/research-team-tracks-complex-web-of-monetary-sanctions-in-9-states/.
  32. ↵
    1. Harris, Alexes,
    2. Mary Pattillo, and
    3. Bryan L. Sykes
    . 2022. “Studying the System of Monetary Sanctions.” RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences 8(1): 1–33. DOI: https://doi.org/10.7758/RSF.2022.8.1.01.
    OpenUrl
  33. ↵
    1. Huebner, Beth M., and
    2. Andrea Giuffre
    . 2022. “Reinforcing the Web of Municipal Courts: Evidence and Implications Post-Ferguson.” RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences 8(1): 108–27. DOI: https://doi.org/10.7758/RSF.2022.8.1.05.
    OpenUrl
  34. ↵
    1. Hyman, Louis
    . 2011. Debtor Nation: The History of America in Red Ink. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.
  35. ↵
    1. Kaiser, Joshua
    . 2016. “Revealing the Hidden Sentence: How to Add Transparency, Legitimacy, and Purpose to Collateral Punishment Policy.” Harvard Law & Policy Review 10(1): 123–83.
    OpenUrl
  36. ↵
    1. Kohler-Hausmann, Issa
    . 2018. Misdemeanorland: Criminal Courts and Social Control in an Age of Broken Windows Policing. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.
  37. ↵
    1. Lynch, Mona
    . 2016. Hard Bargains: The Coercive Power of Drug Laws in Federal Court. New York: Russell Sage Foundation.
  38. ↵
    1. Mann, Kenneth
    . 1980. “Punitive Civil Sanctions: The Middleground Between Criminal and Civil Law.” Yale Law Journal 101(8): 1795–873.
    OpenUrl
  39. ↵
    1. Mathiowetz, Dean
    . 2007. “The Juridical Subject of ‘Interest’.” Political Theory 35(4): 468–93.
    OpenUrlCrossRefWeb of Science
  40. ↵
    1. Miller, Lisa L.
    2013. “Power to the People: Violent Victimization, Inequality and Democratic Politics,” Theoretical Criminology 17(3): 283–313.
    OpenUrlCrossRef
  41. ↵
    1. Miller, Lisa L.
    2016. The Myth of Mob Rule: Violent Crime and Democratic Politics. New York: Oxford University Press.
  42. ↵
    1. Mooney, Alyssa,
    2. Eric Giannella,
    3. M. Maria Glymour,
    4. Torsten B. Neilands,
    5. Meghan D. Morris,
    6. Jacqueline Tulsky, and
    7. May Sudhinaraset
    . 2018. “Racial/Ethnic Disparities in Arrests for Drug Possession After California Proposition 47, 2011–2016.” American Journal of Public Health 108(8): 987–93.
    OpenUrl
  43. ↵
    1. Murakawa, Naomi, and
    2. Katherine Beckett
    . 2010. “The Penology of Racial Innocence: The Erasure of Racism in the Study and Practice of Punishment.” Law & Society Review 44(3–4): 695–730.
    OpenUrlCrossRefPubMedWeb of Science
  44. ↵
    1. Natapoff, Alexandra
    . 2018. Punishment Without Crime: How Our Massive Misdemeanor System Traps the Innocent and Makes America More Unequal. New York: Basic Books.
  45. ↵
    1. National Clean Slate Clearinghouse
    . 2015–2021. Washington: U.S. Department of Labor and U.S. Department of Justice. Accessed March 8, 2021. https://cleanslateclearinghouse.org/about.
  46. ↵
    1. National Inventory of Collateral Consequences of Conviction
    . 2020. NICCC Website. Washington: U.S. Department of Justice, National Reentry Resource Center. Accessed March 8, 2021. https://niccc.nationalreentryresourcecenter.org.
  47. ↵
    1. Needell, Barbara,
    2. M. Alan Brookhart, and
    3. Soon Lee
    . 2003. “Black Children and Foster Care Placement in California.” Children and Youth Services Review 25(5–6): 393–408.
    OpenUrl
  48. ↵
    1. O’Malley, Pat
    . 2013. “Monetized Justice: Money and Punishment in Consumer Societies.” In The SAGE Handbook of Punishment and Society, edited by Jonathan Simon and Richard Sparks. London: Sage Publications.
  49. ↵
    1. Pager, Devah
    . 2003. “The Mark of a Criminal Record.” American Journal of Sociology 108(5): 937–75.
    OpenUrlCrossRef
  50. ↵
    1. Pager, Devah,
    2. Bart Bonikowski, and
    3. Bruce Western
    . 2009. “Discrimination in a Low-Wage Labor Market: A Field Experiment.” American Sociological Review 74(5): 777–99.
    OpenUrlCrossRefPubMedWeb of Science
  51. ↵
    1. Page, Joshua,
    2. Victoria Piehowski, and
    3. Joe Soss
    . 2019. “A Debt of Care: Commercial Bail and the Gendered Logic of Criminal Justice Predation.” RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences 5(1): 150–72. DOI: https://doi.org/10.7758/RSF.2019.5.1.07.
    OpenUrlCrossRef
  52. ↵
    1. Pattillo, Mary, and
    2. Gabriella Kirk
    . 2021. “Layaway Freedom: Coercive Financialization in the Criminal Legal System.” American Journal of Sociology 126(4): 889–930.
    OpenUrl
  53. ↵
    1. Pettit, Becky
    . 2012. Invisible Men: Mass Incarceration and the Myth of Black Progress. New York: Russell Sage Foundation.
  54. ↵
    1. Pettit, Becky, and
    2. Bryan Sykes
    . 2015. “Civil Rights Legislation and Legalized Exclusion: Mass Incarceration and the Masking of Inequality.” Sociological Forum 30(S1): 589–611.
    OpenUrl
  55. ↵
    1. Quinn, Sarah L.
    2017. “‘The Miracles of Bookkeeping’: How Budget Politics Link Fiscal Policies and Financial Markets.” American Journal of Sociology 123(1): 48–85.
    OpenUrl
  56. ↵
    1. Quinn, Sarah L.
    2019. American Bonds: How Credit Markets Shaped a Nation. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.
  57. ↵
    1. Rabinowitz, Mikaela,
    2. Robert Weisberg, and
    3. Lauren McQueen Pearce
    . 2019. “The California Criminal Justice Data Gap.” Palo Alto, Calif.: Stanford Law School.
  58. ↵
    1. Shannon, Sarah K.S.,
    2. Christopher Uggen,
    3. Jason Schnittker,
    4. Melissa Thompson,
    5. Sara Wakefield, and
    6. Michael Massoglia
    . 2017. “The Growth, Scope, and Spatial Distribution of People with Felony Records in the United States, 1948–2010.” Demography 54(5): 1795–818.
    OpenUrl
  59. ↵
    1. Simon, Jonathan
    . 2013. “Punishment and the Political Technologies of the Body.” In The SAGE Handbook of Punishment and Society 60, edited by Jonathan Simon and Richard Sparks. London: Sage Publications.
  60. ↵
    1. Smith, Tyler,
    2. Kristina J. Thompson, and
    3. Michele Cadigan
    . 2022. “Sensemaking in the Legal System: A Comparative Case Study of Changes to Monetary Sanction Laws.” RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences 8(1): 63–81. DOI: https://doi.org/10.7758/RSF.2022.8.1.03.
    OpenUrl
  61. ↵
    1. de Sousa Santos, Boaventura
    . 1987. “Law: A Map of Misreading. Toward a Postmodern Conception of Law.” Journal of Law and Society 14(3): 279–302.
    OpenUrlCrossRefWeb of Science
  62. ↵
    1. State of Texas Office of Court Administration (State of Texas)
    . 2014. Study of the Necessity of Certain Court Costs and Fees in Texas, as Directed by Senate Bill 1908, 83rd Legislature. Austin: Texas Judicial Council. Accessed March 8, 2021. https://www.txcourts.gov/media/495634/SB1908-Report-FINAL.pdf.
  63. ↵
    1. Sykes, Bryan L.,
    2. Meghan Ballard,
    3. Andrea Giuffre,
    4. Rebecca Goodsell,
    5. Daniela Kaiser,
    6. Vicente Celestino Mata, and
    7. Justin Sola
    . 2022. “Robbing Peter to Pay Paul: Public Assistance, Monetary Sanctions, and Financial Double-Dealing in America.” RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences 8(1): 148–78. DOI: https://doi.org/10.7758/RSF.2022.8.1.07.
    OpenUrl
  64. ↵
    1. Uggen, Christopher,
    2. Ryan P. Larson, and
    3. Sarah K.S. Shannon
    . 2016. “6 Million Lost Voters: State-Level Estimates of Felony Disenfranchisement,” Washington: The Sentencing Project. Accessed March 9, 2021. https://www.sentencingproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/6-Million-Lost-Voters.pdf.
  65. ↵
    1. U.S. Census Bureau (Census Bureau)
    . 2021. “2020 Population and Housing State Data,” 2020 Census Redistricting Data (Public Law 94-171) Summary File. Washington: U.S. Department of Commerce. Accessed September 1, 2021. https://www.census.gov/library/visualizations/interactive/2020-population-and-housing-state-data.html.
  66. ↵
    1. U.S. Department of Justice, Civil Rights Division (DOJ)
    . 2015. Investigation of the Ferguson Police Department. Washington: Government Printing Office.
  67. ↵
    1. Walmsley, Dillon
    . 2019. “Neoliberalism, Mass Incarceration, and the US Debt-Criminal Justice Complex.” Critical Social Policy 39(2): 248–67.
    OpenUrl
  68. ↵
    1. Ward, Geoff
    . 2015. “The Slow Violence of State Organized Race Crime.” Theoretical Criminology 19(3): 299–314.
    OpenUrlCrossRef
  69. ↵
    1. Western, Bruce, and
    2. Becky Pettit
    . 2000. “Incarceration and Racial Inequality in Men’s Employment.” Industrial and Labor Relations Review 54(1): 3–16.
    OpenUrlCrossRef
  70. ↵
    1. Western, Bruce, and
    2. Becky Pettit
    . 2005. “Black-White Wage Inequality, Employment Rates, and Incarceration.” American Journal of Sociology 111(2): 553–78.
    OpenUrlCrossRef
    1. Westlaw Next Online Legal Research (Westlaw Next)
    . 2021. “California Statutes & Court Rules.” Eagan, M.N.: Thomson Reuters. https://legal.thomsonreuters.com/en/products/westlaw. Accessed September 1, 2021.
PreviousNext
Back to top

In this issue

RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences: 8 (1)
RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences
Vol. 8, Issue 1
1 Jan 2022
  • Table of Contents
  • Table of Contents (PDF)
  • Cover (PDF)
  • Index by author
  • Front Matter (PDF)
Print
Download PDF
Email Article

Thank you for your interest in spreading the word on RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences.

NOTE: We only request your email address so that the person you are recommending the page to knows that you wanted them to see it, and that it is not junk mail. We do not capture any email address.

Enter multiple addresses on separate lines or separate them with commas.
Beyond the Penal Code: The Legal Capacity of Monetary Sanctions in the Corpus of California Law
(Your Name) has sent you a message from RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences
(Your Name) thought you would like to see the RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences web site.
CAPTCHA
This question is for testing whether or not you are a human visitor and to prevent automated spam submissions.
6 + 1 =
Solve this simple math problem and enter the result. E.g. for 1+3, enter 4.
Citation Tools
Beyond the Penal Code: The Legal Capacity of Monetary Sanctions in the Corpus of California Law
Anjuli Verma, Bryan L. Sykes
RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences Jan 2022, 8 (1) 36-62; DOI: 10.7758/RSF.2022.8.1.02

Citation Manager Formats

  • BibTeX
  • Bookends
  • EasyBib
  • EndNote (tagged)
  • EndNote 8 (xml)
  • Medlars
  • Mendeley
  • Papers
  • RefWorks Tagged
  • Ref Manager
  • RIS
  • Zotero
Share
Beyond the Penal Code: The Legal Capacity of Monetary Sanctions in the Corpus of California Law
Anjuli Verma, Bryan L. Sykes
RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences Jan 2022, 8 (1) 36-62; DOI: 10.7758/RSF.2022.8.1.02
del.icio.us logo Twitter logo Facebook logo Mendeley logo
  • Tweet Widget
  • Facebook Like
  • Google Plus One

Jump to section

  • Article
    • Abstract
    • THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK: THE CIRCUITRY OF MONEY, PUNISHMENT, AND LAW
    • DATA AND METHODOLOGY
    • RESULTS
    • CONCLUSION AND IMPLICATIONS
    • Appendix
    • FOOTNOTES
    • REFERENCES
  • Figures & Data
  • Info & Metrics
  • References
  • PDF

Related Articles

  • No related articles found.
  • Google Scholar

Cited By...

  • No citing articles found.
  • Google Scholar

Similar Articles

Keywords

  • legal financial obligations
  • monetary sanctions
  • legal capacity
  • legal census
  • statutory inequality

© 2025 RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences

Powered by HighWire