Spatial Burdens of State Institutions: The Case of Criminal Courthouses

This article theorizes how space shapes access to state institutions and with what consequences. Drawing on 125 interviews and more than 400 hours of ethnographic observations concerning two criminal courthouses within the same county, we identify four spatial features that differentially shape access alongside institutional rules and norms: functional distance, neighborhood social life, exterior built forms, and interior built forms. When they constrain access, these features constitute spatial burdens, which contribute to distinct institutional and collateral costs concentrated among marginalized groups. We theorize how these costs likely reproduce systemic patterns of inequality by extending people’s burdensome interactions with the institution they seek to access and compelling them to interact with other state institutions that further the state’s power over their lives. The theory of spatial burdens has implications for the study of poverty governance and institutional inequality.