An Assessment of Prisoner Reentry, Legal Financial Obligations and Family Financial Support: A Focus on Fathers.

Andrea N Montes,Leah A Jacobs,Chantal Fahmy,Abigail Henson,Alyssa W Chamberlain,Danielle Wallace

doi:10.3390/ijerph18189625

Abstract

Scholars have found that family support is an important facilitator of successful reentry from prison to the community. At the same time, they have argued that owing court-ordered fines or fees, also called legal financial obligations (LFOs), can act as an additional barrier to reentry, especially for parents. There remains a need to test how LFOs impact the financial support formerly incarcerated parents receive from their families. The current study responds to this gap by employing logistic regression analyses of the Serious and Violent Offender Reentry Initiative (SVORI) data to test whether owing court fees is associated with formerly incarcerated fathers’ (1) perceptions of available financial support from family and (2) receipt of financial support from family. We find that owing court fees is not associated with perceptions of available financial support. However, owing court fees has a positive, statistically significant association with receiving financial support from family during the first three months after prison release. This relationship remains after accounting for whether the person owes child support or sees their children monthly. Our results suggest that LFOs may create a greater need for financial support among formerly incarcerated fathers, making the financial challenges of reentry a consequence not just for those who were incarcerated but for their loved ones as well.

Highlights

To assess whether legal financial obligations (LFOs) are associated with familial support, we focus on two dependent variables
This study focused on whether owing court debts, or having LFOs, was related to how respondents perceived their family’s willingness to provide financial support and whether their family provided financial support
Our discussion focuses on the coefficients associated with whether the individual owed court-ordered fees and whether or not those coefficients changed after adjusting for parental obligations

Summary

Introduction

In 2019, an average of 1665 individuals were released from a state or federal prison every day, with more than 70% of these individuals under some form of conditional release [1]. These conditions can include, among others, mandatory drug tests, frequent check-ins with a parole officer, and participation in community programs [2]. One study found that among the formerly incarcerated individuals surveyed, they each owed an average of $13,607 to the courts when leaving prison [3]. A third study, which analyzed the State Court Processing Statistics, found that among individuals sanctioned with fines, the median amount imposed was $506; and among individuals sanctioned with restitution, the median amount imposed was $400 [5]

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Discussion

Conclusion