Document Type

Article

Publication Date

11-19-2021

Publication Title

Social Sciences

Volume

10

Issue

11

First page number:

1

Last page number:

25

Abstract

Traffic stops and tickets often have far-reaching consequences for poor and marginalized communities, yet resulting fines and fees increasingly fund local court systems. This paper critically explores who bears the brunt of traffic fines and fees in Nevada, historically one of the fastest growing and increasingly diverse states in the nation, and one of thirteen US states to prosecute minor traffic violations as criminal misdemeanors rather than civil infractions. Drawing on legislative histories, we find that state legislators in Nevada increased fines and fees to raise revenues. Using descriptive statistics to analyze the 2012–2020 open arrest warrants extracted from the Las Vegas Municipal Court, we find that 58.6% of all open warrants are from failure to pay tickets owing to administrative-related offenses—vehicle registration and maintenance, no license or plates, or no insurance. Those issued warrants for failure to pay are disproportionately for people who are Black and from the poorest areas in the region. Ultimately, the Nevada system of monetary traffic sanctions criminalizes poverty and reinforces racial disparities.

Keywords

Court fees; Criminal justice policy; Criminalizing poverty; Fines and fees; Mass incarceration; Monetary sanctions; Open warrants; Racialized criminal justice policy; Racialized traffic fines and fees; Traffic tickets; Traffic violations

Disciplines

Civic and Community Engagement | Sociology

File Format

pdf

File Size

2588 KB

Rights

IN COPYRIGHT. For more information about this rights statement, please visit http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

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