The median debt amount to which an individual was sentenced for their instant offense is $1,200; the median cumulative debt over an individual’s criminal career is $4,080.
As the use of legal financial obligations (LFOs) continues to grow, researchers have identified a need to better understand the long-term impacts on justice-involved individuals. Using data on monetary sanctions, criminal histories, and post-release outcomes for individuals released from state prisons in 2009 and 2010, researchers analyzed LFOs assessed for the most recent conviction (instant offense) and the cumulative financial obligations accrued over a person’s criminal career. The authors also conducted a series of Cox proportional hazards survival regression models to estimate the impact of LFOs on rearrest, reconviction, and parole revocation over a three-year follow-up period. The findings reveal that cumulative LFO balance significantly increases recidivism risks and exacerbates racial disparities. The authors conclude that monetary sanctions are not merely administrative penalties, but rather mechanisms that deepen structural disadvantages, prolong involvement in the justice system, and complicate successful reentry.
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Key Findings:
- Lifetime criminal debt is more predictive of recidivism than debt from a single offense.
- Higher cumulative debts increase the risk of rearrest and reconviction.
- Researchers conducted a Cox proportional hazards model, and their analyses of the hazard ratios demonstrated that a doubling of lifetime LFOs increases the hazard of rearrest by 10 percent, reconviction by 11 percent, and parole revocation by 5 percent.
- The probability of rearrest increases from 30 percent for individuals with no debt to 52 percent for individuals with debts of $1,000 and 63 percent for those with debts of $30,000.
- For paroled individuals, the probability of supervision revocation increases from 9 percent for an individual with no debt to between 14 percent for debts of $1,000 and 17 percent for debts of $30,000.
- Black individuals are at higher risk of rearrest even at lower debt amounts compared to White and Hispanic individuals.