Talk with Bryan Sykes of Cornell University

Abstract 

Since the Great Recession, states have increasingly relied less on incarceration and more on diversionary and rehabilitation treatment programs. At the same time, research shows that other types of punishment, like monetary sanctions, have also been placed on the criminal justice reform agenda, highlighting how known financial punishments imposed by courts and probation services continue to burden and entangle poor people in the criminal legal system. Yet, little empirical scholarship has examined how these two consequential areas of research and policy reform intersect in the lives of economically disadvantaged defendants, probationers, and parolees seeking to comply with their state-mandated rehabilitation programs. In this paper, we examine how economic inequality and beliefs about criminal legal system fairness affect indigent people’s behavior through the routine attendance of their state-mandated rehabilitation health programs. Using pilot data from a novel and recent field experiment in Los Angeles County, this paper explores whether perceptions about one’s court case and whether the government should pay for rehabilitation services mediate the relationship between economic inequality (and its alleviation) and compliance with court-ordered programs. Findings from this study will shed light on how beliefs and actions align within the criminal legal system – in the presence and absence of economic inequality among the poor – to highlight potential policy solutions and reforms for financial punishments and population health in the criminal legal system.