2022 journal article
The "Damaged" State vs. the "Willful" Nonpayer: Pay-to-Stay and the Social Construction of Damage, Harm, and Moral Responsibility in a Rent-Seeking Society
RSF-THE RUSSELL SAGE JOURNAL OF THE SOCIAL SCIENCES, 8(1), 82–105.
author keywords: monetary sanctions; pay-to-stay; willful nonpayer; labeling; legal moralism; rent-seeking
www.rsfjournal.org (publisher PDF)
UN Sustainable Development Goal Categories
16. Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions
(Web of Science; OpenAlex)
Source: Web Of Science
Added: February 7, 2022
States increasingly look to incarcerated individuals as a source of revenue to alleviate the fiscal burden of incarceration, which results in suing prisoners for these costs. Through lawsuit complaints, states claim they have suffered damages and seek reimbursement from incarcerated individuals through pay-to-stay fees. Drawing from an original dataset consisting of 102 civil complaints from Illinois, we examine how the state constructs damage, harm, and willfulness through pay-to-stay lawsuits. We find that the state achieves this beneficial outcome by labeling incarcerated individuals as willful nonpayers and thereby morally responsible for what it terms damages suffered. Our empirical and theoretical contributions position civil lawsuits as part of imagining incarcerated individuals as fiscally responsible for their incarceration within a rent-seeking society, contextualizing the social linkages between willfulness, legal moralism, and perpetual indebtedness.