Layaway Freedom: Coercive Financialization in the Criminal Legal System1

Economic sociologists have documented the rise of financialization, including credit and debt. In the case of monetary sanctions in the criminal legal system, courts frequently extend payment plans—or “layaway”—as a way for defendants to manage financial court debt and gain their freedom. Using 241...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:The American journal of sociology 2021-01, Vol.126 (4), p.889-930
Main Authors: Pattillo, Mary, Kirk, Gabriela
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Coercion
Courts
Debt
Defendants
Economic sociology
Ethnography
Financial responsibility
Freedoms
Involuntary
Legal system
Manipulation
Microsociology
Money
Punishment
Sanctions
Sociology of law
State court decisions
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Summary:Economic sociologists have documented the rise of financialization, including credit and debt. In the case of monetary sanctions in the criminal legal system, courts frequently extend payment plans—or “layaway”—as a way for defendants to manage financial court debt and gain their freedom. Using 241 hours of courtroom ethnography and 155 interviews with court actors and people paying their court debt in Illinois, the authors offer a microsociology of financialization that shows how the creditor/debtor relationship commodifies freedom, confuses and suffuses court processes, amplifies control, and expands the financial sector into domains that obligate participation. Layaway freedom represents a case of coercive financialization, or the externally imposed, involuntary, or last-resort entry into financial engagements. The manipulation of money and time achieves disproportionate punishment that is multiplicative, rather than simply additive, all under the guise of routine financial responsibility. The authors discuss implications of these concepts for both economic and criminal-legal sociology.
ISSN:0002-9602
1537-5390
DOI:10.1086/712871