How common is debt imprisonment in U.S. today? – Harvard Gazette

Over nearly four years, we collected and standardized more than 4 million prison charges and nearly 3 million court records. Stanford economics graduate student Sarah Vicol rounded out the team.

This data provides an order of magnitude estimate of the prevalence of debt incarceration in a given state. Between 2005 and 2018, Texas courts jailed people for failure to pay about 38,000 times a year, and Wisconsin courts jailed people about 8,000 times a year. In both states, the median time spent in prison was one day.

They also examined court debt data in Oklahoma and found that the most common cause of unpaid fines and fees that lead to incarceration were due to traffic offenses, with the typical court debtor in Oklahoma paying approximately $250, or It was discovered that if a warrant was issued for his arrest, he would owe approximately $500.

Their data collection included personal case studies. “MS.” A Black woman from Austin, Texas, spent a night in jail in 2017 after years of arrests for traffic violations and failure to pay them. Her incarceration led some researchers to is an extreme example of what they call the “criminalization of poverty,” the researchers wrote. These are the ways America’s criminal justice system deals with punishment through mechanisms that disproportionately impact poor people, such as cash bail, fines, and court costs.

At first, I felt that this project was unusual for academic research. other projects Applying a statistical lens to social justice and policy issues. “It didn’t require fancy extrapolations or clever scientific ideas. It was just, ‘This is something that’s very important, but unfortunately it takes a huge amount of work to measure.’ That was it.”

Debt incarceration “feels like something that shouldn’t exist anymore,” Gabler said. Their analysis highlights the potential for change, as some states, like Colorado, have eliminated the issuance of default warrants.

The researchers hope their analysis will spark conversations and help other researchers and policymakers better understand debt incarceration within individual communities. they are publishing data.