Colloquium Series: Alexes Harris, University of Washington What When Nov 30, 2011 from 12:00 PM to 01:00 PM Where Hamilton Hall, Room 271 Add event to calendar vCal iCal

Alexes Harris, Associate Professor, Department of Sociology, University of Washington

An Intended Consequence: Monetary Sanctions as a Permanent Punishment for Poor People

Abstract: My recent research has illustrated the various ways the United States criminal justice system imposes monetary sanctions to people committed of felony offenses.  This sentencing option includes fines, fees and restitution, and also court user fees (such as the costs associated with public defense, paper work, and juries).  This work shows that, as a result of their indigence, offenders remain closely connected to the surveillance and sanctioning of criminal justice agents, but also to the stigmatizing effects of their original felony conviction.  Informed by this research, the current talk will present recently collected observational data of Superior Court sentencing and violation hearings and interview data with judges, attorneys and county clerks to illustrate 1) the various ways counties (operating under the same state statute) implement financial penalties to felony convicts and sanction those labeled as “willful” non-payers, and 2) will discuss how  variations in organizational and political structure impact these sentencing practices.   My analysis illustrates how court actors interpret the state statue as well as their defendants’ social and legal characteristics, and examines the informal mechanisms individual counties have developed to assess, manage and sanction defendants who carry legal debt.

This presentation summarizes a chapter from my solo-authored book project that documents how the criminal justice system differentially impacts poor Americans involved with the criminal justice system, and disproportionately people of color.  This multi-method study produces a detailed and analytic story about the contemporary use of monetary sanctions in the U.S., with Washington State as the case study, and situates this work within a broader discussion about the systemic ways in which U.S. institutions have removed citizenship rights, stigmatized and marginalized its poor and people of color.

Alexes Harris is an Associate Professor at the Department of Sociology at the University of Washington. Her degrees in the field of Sociology are from the University of Washington (B.A., 1997) and the University of California, Los Angeles (M.A., 1999; Ph.D., 2002).  Her research and teaching areas include the juvenile and criminal justice systems, qualitative research methods, and social stratification and inequality. She is currently researching the process and consequences of Legal Financial Obligations assessed to individuals convicted of felonies in Washington State and the process of “re-entry” post conviction. Her research has been published in Law and Society Review, The Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, Race and Social Problems and is forthcoming in the American Journal of Sociology.