PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Robert Stewart
AU  - Brieanna Watters
AU  - Veronica Horowitz
AU  - Ryan P. Larson
AU  - Brian Sargent
AU  - Christopher Uggen
TI  - Native Americans and Monetary Sanctions
AID  - 10.7758/RSF.2022.8.2.07
DP  - 2022 Jan 01
TA  - RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences
PG  - 137--156
VI  - 8
IP  - 2
4099  - http://www.rsfjournal.org/content/8/2/137.short
4100  - http://www.rsfjournal.org/content/8/2/137.full
AB  - Native Americans are disproportionately affected by the criminal legal system, yet comparative analyses of criminal legal outcomes and experiences among racial and ethnic groups rarely center the experiences of Native Americans. This multimethod study examines how monetary sanctions are affecting Native American populations in Minnesota. Drawing on administrative criminal court data and qualitative fieldwork, we find that Native Americans are subject to among the largest overall legal financial obligations (LFOs) in criminal court and carry the largest average LFO debt loads relative to other racial and ethnic groups in Minnesota, particularly when proximal to tribal lands. Moreover, monetary sanctions exacerbate existing poverty and spatial isolation in rural areas, compounding and further entrenching historical, systemic disadvantages that Native communities already face. We contextualize these findings within the broader history of U.S. settler colonialism, resource extraction, and dispossession.