RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 Native Americans and Monetary Sanctions
JF RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences
FD Russell Sage Foundation
SP 137
OP 156
DO 10.7758/RSF.2022.8.2.07
VO 8
IS 2
A1 Robert Stewart
A1 Brieanna Watters
A1 Veronica Horowitz
A1 Ryan P. Larson
A1 Brian Sargent
A1 Christopher Uggen
YR 2022
UL http://www.rsfjournal.org/content/8/2/137.abstract
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.