Thread by @WesternBruce

Fines and fees in misdemeanor courts saddle people convicted of minor crimes with $1000s of legal debt. What happens if you pay off the debt? 1/9

A randomized experiment in Oklahoma County took a group of people convicted of misdemeanors. The treatment group had all their past and current county debt paid off. What happens when your debt is relieved? 2/9

Policymakers say fines and fees help make people accountable and can be a deterrent to further crime. There was no deterrence in Oklahoma: treatments and controls had the same levels of re-arrest, re-conviction, and re-incarceration 3/9

People who had their debt paid off did avoid all the debt collection efforts of the Oklahoma County court. They had fewer warrants for nonpayment, less new debt, were less likely to deal with a debt collector, and more likely to keep their state tax refund 4/9

So did the court at least recoup the fines fees by issuing warrants, calling in debt collectors etc? No. Only 5% of outstanding debt was collected over one year of follow up. 5/9

Despite warrants and calling in debt collectors etc, why did the court fail to collect its debt? Because people with misdemeanor cases are poor, they can struggle with homelessness, untreated addiction, and mental illness. They have little capacity to pay 6/9

The RCT in Oklahoma shows that fines and fees produce a criminalization of poverty. Court involvement and the risk of incarceration is piled on people who can't pay. There's no deterrence and no cost recovery 7/9
journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.11…

This study was led by Devah Pager, and Devah and I travelled down to Oklahoma many times with our great co-authors @helencho and Becca Goldstein to conduct the research 8/9

Oklahoma has little of the Medicaid or food stamps common in the northeast. There's a ramshackle jail, a futile and punitive system of fines and fees, but great activists who are making change 9/9

@AlexesHarris @chrisuggen @MichelleSPhelps @FinesandFeesJC @Arnold_Ventures