Vol. 48, No. 3: Economic Issues in Criminal Justice

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Civil Rights & Constitution

Why Are We Still Sending People to Jail for Being Poor? It's Time to Truly Abolish Debtors' Prisons

by Tim Curry

Debtors’ prisons are alive in the United States, despite a history of condemning them. Yet, there is hope for change, as litigation, legislative reform, and general recognition of the harms that court-imposed debt can cause are leading to reform.

Criminal

Antiracist Parole Reform Is Past Due

by Jason D. Williamson

Although many aspects of the criminal legal system need to be reformed, and ultimately abolished, a functioning parole system is particularly important to any serious effort to decrease bloated prison populations.

Women's Rights

The End of Roe and the Criminalization of Abortion: More of the Same for Too Many

by Farah Diaz-Tello and Sara Ainsworth

The ability to keep people from being criminalized for ending pregnancies hangs on the guiding principle that an act or omission a person undertakes that might affect the outcome of a pregnancy is not a crime.

Homelessness

Why Discrimination Against Unhoused People Makes the Housing Crisis Worse—And What We Can Do About It

by Eve Garrow

Instead of addressing a chronic shortfall of affordable housing, lawmakers often pursue policies that segregate, banish, cite, and imprison unhoused people. To stem this crisis, states should intervene to ban discrimination based on housing status.

Courts & Judiciary

ABA Efforts to Combat the Criminalization of Poverty

by Malia N. Brink

Excessive fines and fees, and the draconian measures courts have pursued to enforce and collect them, have burdened millions of Americans, particularly those too poor to pay.

Courts & Judiciary

The High Price of Cash Bail

by Nicole Zayas Manzano

Early Americans fought for a presumption of innocence that valued freedom as equally as justice. But the framers left behind a fatal design flaw: cash bail. As a result, we all pay more than we know.

Regulatory Practice

Social Equity in Marijuana Regulation

by Sam Kamin

As the federal government now moves, slowly, toward legalization at the federal level, it is already clear that social equity will play an important part in any decriminalization changes to come.

Family

How Fines and Fees Impact Families: Can Policies Like the Child Tax Credit Help?

by Aravind Boddupalli and Elaine Maag

While the expanded CTC provided families with some relief from onerous fines and fees, a temporary tax policy should not be used to solve the inequitable system of fines and fees in criminal law.

Immigration

Migrant Detention, Corporate Profit

by César Cuauhtémoc García Hernández

The Biden administration hasn’t just recommitted to immigration imprisonment. It has backtracked on its promises to immigration advocates.

Civil Rights & Constitution

Criminalizing Poverty through the “Market in Incarcerated People”

by Atteeyah Hollie

Communities and states across the country are reimagining justice without price tags and taking small and large steps to divorce the scarlet letter of system involvement from one’s income.

Public Defense

The Collision Between Human Rights, Justice, and Money in Public Defense

by Rosalie Joy

While 80 percent of people charged with crimes in the United States are living at or below the poverty level, it does not mean they get a free lawyer; they get an attorney they must pay for after their case has been adjudicated.

Criminal

America's Dystopian Incarceration System of Pay to Stay Behind Bars

by Lauren-Brooke Eisen

Eisen highlights a current-day practice where correctional institutions and for-profit firms charge incarcerated people and their families numerous and inflated fees for costs related to their incarceration.

Human Rights

Human Rights Hero: U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor

by Melissa Murray

Justice Sonia Sotomayor exhibits an abiding faith in the law and its institutions. She makes her voice heard—at oral arguments and in stinging dissents that make clear the stakes of the Court’s work for the country and its citizens.

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Vol. 48, No. 3: Economic Issues in Criminal Justice

Introduction

Featured