Individuals in Default or the System? Race and Ethnicity, Stratification Views on Legal Debt, and Desire for Escalating Punishment

Abstract

How do members of racial and ethnic groups explain the origins of unpaid legal debt from monetary sanctions, and how do such attributions undergird group differences in support for policy responses that escalate punishment? Using data from the Chicago Area Finances Survey, 2019, we apply an attributional typology of stratification beliefs to account for why legal debt from fines, fees, and tickets goes unpaid. We find differences in attribution types along key measures of socio-demographics and political values, and we identify racial differences in these attributions when other measures are held constant. How people understand why legal debt goes unpaid shapes their policy preferences as well, and they explain a small but significant fraction of racial and ethnic differences in the desire for punitive recourse.