Reinforcing the Web of Municipal Courts: Evidence and Implications Post-Ferguson

Abstract

Investigations in Ferguson, Missouri, revealed that many individuals, particularly Black people, entered the criminal justice system for relatively minor offenses, missed court appearances, or failure to pay fines. Municipal courts were focused on revenue generation, which led to aggressive enforcement of municipal codes. Although subsequent reforms were passed, little is known about whether and how the legislative changes influenced the law-in-action in the municipal courts. Using data from qualitative interviews with St. Louis area residents and regional court actors, as well as court observations, this article documents the legal structure of municipal courts in the region after Ferguson. We address how the parochial nature of municipal courts in St. Louis County perpetuates the financial marginalization of residents through the layering of punishment, and how the state legal structure further facilitates control, even after reform.

Unpredictable and monetized contact with the police: Race, avoidance behaviors, and modified activity spaces

“…He estimated that he owed ∼$1,500 in fines for failing to appear and could not afford a lawyer to resolve the warrants. Individuals who qualify as indigent in Missouri and are charged with nonfelony cases are not eligible for legal representation through a public defender, compounding their financial challenges and increasing the practical requirements for compliance (Huebner & Giuffre, 2022). Those who cannot pay are often tethered to the system for extended periods (Pattillo & Kirk, 2021), and therefore, a simple discretionary police stop can have long‐ranging consequences.…”

“…Although revisions to the funding structure in the St. Louis County region were enacted because of the investigations in Ferguson, the legal mandates only required a minor (and primarily symbolic) change to the amount of funding that could be derived from monetary sanctions. In this way, policing practices in the region appear to be a static force driven by the need for revenue (Huebner & Giuffre, 2022). True reform would likely require a decoupling of police funding from monetary sanctions, which would reduce the structural push for more enforcement.…”

“…Individuals who cannot pay for legal sanctions or who do not have the means or ability to comply with court requirements can be subject to additional costs, court‐mandated programming, and even incarceration (Gottschalk, 2008; Harris, 2016; Martin et al., 2022; Pattillo & Kirk, 2021). Huebner and Giuffre (2022) documented that individuals who reside in the parochially governed St. Louis metropolitan area may receive identical traffic tickets multiple times from different municipalities, further tethering those who cannot resolve their legal debt to the court system. Individuals unable to pay or who miss a court appearance are often issued warrants and are subject to incarceration (Slocum et al., 2022).…”

Police Killings and Municipal Reliance on Fine-and-Fee Revenue

“…To build on these reforms, cities should remove additional sanctions for failure to pay and increase transparency so that those fined have a clear understanding of what they owe (Shannon et al 2020). In regions with many fragmented suburbs, jurisdictions rarely coordinate to eliminate fines, so even in places that have capped costs, people might have legal entanglements from adjacent municipalities (Huebner and Giuffre 2022). This means true criminal legal reform will need action by state governments or an end to municipal fragmentation.…”

Legal financial obligations in the United States: A review of recent research

“…Cadigan and Kirk (2020) show that it is not just the LFO amount that affects people with debt; but rather, the ways that the system monitors and tries to collect them adds pressure on people, stressing them more and affecting their ability to pay those LFOs. Huebner and Giuffre (2022) did interviews with individuals with legal debt and court actors, as well as observations in municipal courts in St. Louis County, to reveal the fragmented nature of misdemeanor justice, which they term the “muni‐shuffle,” whereby people accumulate multiple LFOs and warrants for the same violation (often traffic‐related) across the various municipalities in the St. Louis area. Moreover, there is a lack of coordinated information flow between the municipalities, leading people to not know what they owe where.…”