Public opinion about the shadow carceral state: A study of support for criminal justice fees

Public opinion about legal financial obligations (LFOs) is under-researched, despite the fact that LFOs are one facet of the “shadow carceral state” that interacts with poverty and financial precarity to significantly constrain the lives of people with criminal records. Furthermore, attitudes toward poverty have also been largely overlooked as a potential predictor of punitive attitudes. To begin to fill these knowledge gaps, we analyze data from a national sample of the American population using both experimental and nonexperimental methods. We find that people's support for criminal justice fees, both in general and in the case of a hypothetical offender, is shaped not just by their broader attitudes toward punishment, but also—with notable consistency—by their perceptions of and attitudes toward people who experience poverty. We discuss the implications of these findings for both the sociology of punishment and sociolegal studies.