Racial and Neighborhood Disparities in Legal Financial Obligations in Jefferson County, Alabama

Abstract

Legal financial obligations (LFOs) such as court fees and fines are commonly levied on individuals who are convicted of crimes. It is expected that LFO amounts should be similar across social, racial, and geographic subpopulations convicted of the same crime. This work analyzes the distribution of LFOs in Jefferson County, Alabama and highlights disparities across different individual and neighborhood demographic characteristics. Data-driven discovery methods are used to detect subpopulations that experience higher LFOs than the overall population of offenders. Critically, these discovery methods do not rely on pre-specified groups and can assist scientists and researchers investigate socially-sensitive hypotheses in a disciplined way. Some findings, such as individuals who are Black, live in Black-majority neighborhoods, or live in low-income neighborhoods tending to experience higher LFOs, are commensurate with prior expectation. However others, such as high LFO amounts in worthless instrument (bad check) cases experienced disproportionately by individuals living in affluent majority-white neighborhoods, are more surprising. More broadly than the specific findings, the methodology is shown to identify structural weaknesses that undermine the goal of equal justice under law that can be addressed through policy interventions.