![]() In addition to adding empirical findings to scholarship on monetary sanctions, the article adds to our understanding of the court system as an institution of surveillance, management, and particularly enduring social control. This article expands the literature that examines the ways criminal justice involvement impedes full and consistent labor market participation-adding a new focus on court administrative processes for debt collection. These practices led to missed days of work, made it difficult to get to work on time, and strained individuals’ time and resources needed to seek employment. Three practices emerged as procedural pressure points with unique transaction costs in the courts’ debt management process: compliance review hearings, failure to appear (FTA) warrants, and driver’s license suspensions for unpaid LFOs. Further, by looking at each point within the process separately, we describe how these practices related to each other and affected individuals differently depending on their access to resources such as stable housing and reliable transportation. This concept allows for a more detailed analysis of the specific practices that contribute to procedural hassle, particularly in the post-sentencing process, and enables examination of the unique consequences associated with each practice. Drawing from interview data and ethnographic court observations, we conceptualize these particular practices as procedural pressure points to pinpoint the mechanisms embedded in the court’s process for managing payment that strained labor market experiences and led to this counterproductive system. In the case of monetary sanctions, respondents in this study identified particular practices within the court that extracted time and resources beyond the debt itself that constrained their ability to access and maintain stable employment. Work on the pre-sentencing process has defined procedural hassle as the “burdens and opportunity costs attendant to complying with the legal proceedings” ( Kohler-Hausmann 2013, 353). Thus, when courts use a system for managing payments that strains labor market participation, they undermine their goal of recouping costs and trap individuals in an endless cycle of court surveillance. For financially strained individuals, access to stable employment is vital to paying off court debt and exiting the criminal justice system ( Harris 2016). Focusing on impacts on employment, this study examines how court bureaucratic processes for monitoring and incentivizing payment toward LFOs place pressure and strain on the lives of individuals outside the formal punishment of the debt. Monetary sanctions are a particularly important context in which to examine this process because they can be more enduring and pervasive than other forms of justice system supervision. Previous work has demonstrated the punishing nature of the court process itself prior to conviction ( Feeley 1979 Kohler-Hausmann 2018) and the ways that court surveillance profoundly shapes the lives of the justice-involved ( Goffman 2014 Cozzolino 2018 Brayne 2014 Vanhaelemeesch, Vander Beken, and Vandevelde 2014), but it has not discussed the management of court debt as part of this surveillance of individuals over time. Scholars have yet to examine, however, the possible destabilizing effects of court processes used for managing payments on those burdened with this debt. 1998 Ruback and Shaffer 2005 Olson and Ramker 2001 Beckett and Harris 2011). ![]() Researchers also find that the discretion in imposing and collecting monetary sanctions by clerks, judges, and community supervision officers has led to inconsistent and inequitable practices ( Alexander et al. ![]() Within a burgeoning literature examining how LFOs shape the lives of those who incur these debts, researchers highlight racial and ethnic differences in amounts imposed ( Harris, Evans, and Beckett 2011), sanctions for nonpayment ( Bannon, Diller, and Nagrecha 2010 Harris 2016 Friedman and Pattillo 2019), and the financial strain LFO payments can place on poor debtors ( Colgan 2018 Beckett and Harris 2011). Research investigating monetary sanctions-the fines, fees, restitution, costs, and surcharges that court systems impose-has revealed the ways these legal financial obligations (LFOs) create precarious conditions for the justice-involved ( Harris 2016 Harris, Evans, and Beckett 2010 Edelman 2017).
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