Monetary Sanctions and Housing Instability

Abstract

The relationship between criminal legal involvement and housing is complex because the causal arrow goes both ways. Research documents a homelessness-incarceration nexus whereby homelessness is criminalized, and incarceration leads to homelessness. In this article, we broaden the scope of housing outcomes by considering housing instability more generally and we shift the focus to legal financial obligations (LFOs) as a specific kind of criminal legal sanction, apart from incarceration or the effects of a record. Our data consist of surveys and qualitative interviews with people paying LFOs (N = 519), interviews with court actors (N = 443), and more than 1,900 hours of courtroom ethnography in eight states, plus nationally representative survey data. We find substantial evidence of a housing instability-LFO nexus, a caustic churn whereby a population with identifiable housing hardships is saddled with a punishment that deepens financial strain and thus weakens housing stability.