Abstract
People convicted of crime are often treated as atomistic individuals by the criminal justice system, ignoring the fact that they are largely embedded in social networks. Research shows that family members are often negatively impacted by their relatives’ punishment despite not breaking any laws themselves. These detrimental effects of punishment on family are known as symbiotic harms. Most research on symbiotic harms, however, has focused on incarceration. We extend this research by describing how monetary sanctions harm the families of adults with legal debt. Our data come from semi-structured interviews with 140 people with legal debt and ninety-six court actors in Georgia and Missouri. We find evidence that family members are often coerced into paying their relatives’ fines and fees and that monetary sanctions increase the financial strain, emotional distress, and interpersonal conflict that relatives experience.
- © 2022 Russell Sage Foundation. Boches, Daniel J., Brittany T. Martin, Andrea Giuffre, Amairini Sanchez, Aubrianne L. Sutherland, and Sarah K.S. Shannon. 2022. “Monetary Sanctions and Symbiotic Harms.” RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences 8(2): 98–115. DOI: 10.7758/RSF.2022.8.2.05. This research was funded by a grant to the University of Washington from Arnold Ventures (Alexes Harris, PI). We thank the faculty and graduate student collaborators of the Multi-State Study of Monetary Sanctions for their intellectual contributions to the project. Partial support for this research came from a Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development research infrastructure grant, P2C HD042828, to the Center for Studies in Demography and Ecology at the University of Washington. We also thank Mark Cooney, Justine Tinkler, and several anonymous reviewers for their comments on previous drafts. Direct correspondence to: Daniel J. Boches, at daniel.boches{at}uga.edu, Department of Sociology, University of Georgia, 113 Baldwin Hall, Athens, GA 30602, United States; Brittany T. Martin, at brittany.martin{at}wku.edu, Department of Sociology and Criminology, Western Kentucky University, 100/101 Grise Hall, Bowling Green, KY 42101, United States; Andrea Giuffre, at amg7v9{at}mail.umsl.edu, Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice, University of Missouri–St. Louis, 324 Lucas Hall, St. Louis, MO 63121, United States; Amairini Sanchez, at amairini.sanchez{at}uga.edu, Department of Sociology, University of Georgia, 113 Baldwin Hall, Athens, GA 30602, United States; Aubrianne L. Sutherland, at alsuther{at}uci.edu; Sarah K.S. Shannon, at sshannon{at}uga.edu, Department of Sociology, University of Georgia, 113 Baldwin Hall, Athens, GA 30602, United States.
Open Access Policy: RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences is an open access journal. This article is published under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.