Native Americans and Monetary Sanctions

• Published in: RSF : Russell Sage Foundation journal of the social sciences Vol. 8; no. 2; pp. 137 - 156
• Main Authors: STEWART, ROBERT, WATTERS, BRIEANNA, HOROWITZ, VERONICA, LARSON, RYAN P., SARGENT, BRIAN, UGGEN, CHRISTOPHER
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: New York Russell Sage Foundation 01.01.2022
• Subjects: Acculturation; American Indians; Assimilation; Colonialism; Courts; Criminalization; Criminals; Debt (Financial); Ethnic groups; Ethnicity; Extraction; Federal Government; Geographic Isolation; Geography; Imprisonment; indigenous; Indigenous Populations; Institutionalization; Justice; Juvenile Courts; Land Acquisition; Legal system; Minority & ethnic groups; monetary sanctions; Native North Americans; Native women; PART IV: Disparate Effects of Financial Penalties; Political Affiliation; Politics; Poverty; Power Structure; Punishment; Racial Factors; Racial Relations; Rural areas; Rural communities; rural criminal justice; Rural Sociology; Sanctions; School Policy; settler colonialism; Social exclusion; Social Problems; Social Sciences; Treaties; Tribes; Values; Victimization; Victims of Crime; Violence; United States > US; Minnesota
• DOI: 10.7758/RSF.2022.8.2.07
• ISSN: 2377-8253

Native Americans are disproportionately affected by the criminal legal system, yet comparative analyses of criminal legal outcomes and experiences among racial and ethnic groups rarely center the experiences of Native Americans. This multimethod study examines how monetary sanctions are affecting Native American populations in Minnesota. Drawing on administrative criminal court data and qualitative fieldwork, we find that Native Americans are subject to among the largest overall legal financial obligations (LFOs) in criminal court and carry the largest average LFO debt loads relative to other racial and ethnic groups in Minnesota, particularly when proximal to tribal lands. Moreover, monetary sanctions exacerbate existing poverty and spatial isolation in rural areas, compounding and further entrenching historical, systemic disadvantages that Native communities already face. We contextualize these findings within the broader history of U. S. settler colonialism, resource extraction, and dispossession.