Effects of Financial Sanctions in the Criminal Justice System

在美国刑事司法系统中，对与刑事司法系统有接触的个人施加法律的经济义务，俗称经济制裁，这种做法很普遍，而且越来越多。这些收费和罚款可能会产生严重的社会和经济后果，特别是对无法按时缴纳的低收入人口。这些成本可能超过预期的好处，如威慑犯罪，强制出庭，并作出赔偿，经济制裁。该项目的目标是评估司法系统中的金融制裁对受影响的个人及其家庭造成的经济和社会后果。由于罚款在不同司法管辖区和司法系统的不同阶段有很大差异，因此这是一个多州项目，将利用各州的多个自然实验来记录潜在的异质影响并了解调解渠道。为了实现这一目标，研究人员将使用刑事司法行政记录系统（CJARS），结合美国人口普查局掌握的个人人口和经济数据。此外，该项目将把个人与其家庭成员联系起来，以评估对其配偶和子女的溢出效应，从而大大提高目前对金融制裁的理解。为了衡量金融制裁的影响，研究人员将利用自然实验，从不同国家对不同金融制裁制定的各种政策中，使用急剧的回归不连续性进行因果识别。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

The use of legal financial obligations, colloquially referred to as financial sanctions, imposed on individuals who come into contact with the criminal justice system is widespread and growing in the U.S. criminal justice system. These fees and fines could generate serious social and economic consequences, particularly among low-income populations who are unable to pay them on time. These costs may outweigh the intended benefits, such as deterring crime, compelling court appearances, and making restitution, of financial sanctions. The goal of this project is to evaluate the economic and social consequences of financial sanctions in the justice system on affected individuals and their families. Since fines vary widely across jurisdictions and stages of the justice system to which they are applied, this is a multi-state project that will leverage multiple natural experiments across a variety of states to document potential heterogeneous impacts and understand mediating channels.To achieve this, researchers will use the Criminal Justice Administrative Record System (CJARS), combined with individual-level demographic and economic data held by the U.S. Census Bureau. Furthermore, the project will link individuals to their family members to assess spillover effects on their spouses and children, significantly improving the current understanding of financial sanctions. To measure the impact of financial, researchers will leverage natural experiments from the enactment of a variety of policies on different financial sanctions across various states, using a sharp regression discontinuity for causal identification. Outcomes of interest are labor market outcomes and criminal behavior.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.