Abstract
(1) The increase in women’s mass incarceration over the past forty years raises questions about how justice-involved women experience the financial aspects of the criminal justice system. (2) We conducted in-depth interviews with twenty justice-involved women and seven criminal law and reentry professionals, and conducted courtroom observations in southeastern Pennsylvania. (3) The results from this exploratory research reveal that women’s roles as caregivers, their greater health needs, and higher likelihood of being poor creates barriers to paying fines and fees and exacerbates challenges in reentry. (4) These challenges contribute to a cycle of prolonged justice involvement and financial instability.
Highlights
Between 1978 and 2015, the number of women in the U.S correctional population rose by 834 percent, more than twice the rate of men
The analysis of in-depth interviews with twenty justice-involved women, seven criminal law and reentry professionals, and courtroom observations in southeastern Pennsylvania reveals that fines, costs, and fees coupled with preexisting issues such as caregiving and trauma, create intractable reentry barriers for women, contributing to a cycle of prolonged justice involvement and financial instability
The women we interviewed expressed a shared sense of financial and legal precarity related to their justice involvement
Summary
Between 1978 and 2015, the number of women in the U.S correctional population rose by 834 percent, more than twice the rate of men. Two million women and girls return home every year; one million women currently live under probation, parole, and correctional supervision (Kajstura 2019; The Sentencing Project 2019). During this same period, the criminal justice system became increasingly financialized, evidenced by the growth in private prisons and widespread use of legal financial obligations (LFOs) such as fines and fees (Friedman and Pattillo 2019; Wang 2018; Harris 2016). Most research on incarceration and reentry focuses on men or on the justice-involved population as a whole and ignores the unique circumstances of women (Kajstura 2019; Swavola et al 2016). We examine the implications of financial precarity throughout the stages of subjects’ justice involvement, highlighting the unique experiences of justice-involved women and the role of the financialization of the criminal justice system in amplifying participants’ challenges
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