Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-fbnjt Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-09T12:46:02.415Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Punishment by Association: The Burden of Attending Court for Legal Bystanders

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 December 2021

Abstract

Scholars have shown how legal bystanders experience punishment at the hands of the state in their homes and neighborhoods, as well as jails and prisons. Other scholars have shown how bureaucratic processes, such as attending court, are punitive toward people charged with crimes. There is less information about how legal bystanders also experience punishment in courtrooms. In this article, we bridge the literatures between secondary prisonization and procedural punishment to illustrate how legal bystanders, such as family and friends of bond court defendants, experience punishment when attending bond court. We utilize courtroom ethnography of Central Bond Court in Chicago’s Cook County and interviews with family and friends of people charged with a crime to illustrate this form of punishment in three themes: extraction, destabilization, and degradation. With these findings, we argue that secondary prisonization begins not at the point of incarceration, but at the moment a loved one’s contact with the criminal legal system begins.

Type
Articles
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the American Bar Foundation

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

The authors would like to thank Brian Tuohy, Gabriela Kirk, and the anonymous reviewers at Law and Social Inquiry for their helpful comments and suggestions.

References

REFERENCES

Aiello, Brittnie L., and McCorkel, Jill A.. “‘It Will Crush You Like a Bug’: Maternal Incarceration, Secondary Prisonization, and Children’s Visitation.” Punishment & Society 20, no. 3 (2018): 351–74.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Alexander, Michelle. The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness. New York: The New Press, 2010.Google Scholar
Apel, Robert, Blokland, Arjan A. J., Paul, Nieuwbeerta, and Marieke, van Schellen.The Impact of Imprisonment on Marriage and Divorce: A Risk Set Matching Approach.Journal of Quantitative Criminology. 26 (2010): 269300.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ares, Charles E., Anne, Rankin, and Herbert, Sturz. “The Manhattan Bail Project: An Interim Report on the Pre-trial Use of Pre-trial Parole.New York University Law Review 38 (1963): 6795.Google Scholar
Auyero, Javier. Patients of the State: The Politics of Waiting in Argentina. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2012.Google Scholar
Bales, William D., and Mears, Daniel P.. “Inmate Social Ties and the Transition to Society: Does Visitation Reduce Recidivism?Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency. 45, no. 3 (2008): 287321.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bellware, Kim. “Chicago Judge Orders Access to Free Lawyers at Police Stations.” Huffington Post, Mar. 14, 2017. https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/chicago-free-legal-aid-policecustody_us_58c87c81e4b09e52f5545e4b.Google Scholar
Bogira, Steve. Courtroom 302: A Year Behind the Scenes in an American Criminal Courthouse. New York: First Vintage Books, 2005.Google Scholar
Braman, Donald. Doing Time on the Outside: Incarceration and Family Life in Urban America. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2004.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Christian, Johnna. “Who Are Prisoners’ Family Members? Towards an Holistic and Intersectional Framework.” In The Palgrave Handbook of Prison and the Family. Edited by Marie Hutton and Dominique Moran, 81–98. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Clair, Matthew. Privilege and Punishment: How Race and Class Matter in Criminal Court. Princeton University Press: Princeton, NJ, 2020.Google Scholar
Coalition to End Money Bond. “Monitoring Cook County’s Central Bond Court.” 2018. https://chicagobond.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/courtwatching-report_coalition-to-end-money-bond_final_2-25-18.pdf.Google Scholar
Cochan, Joshua C. “Inmate Social Ties, Recidivism, and Continuing Questions about Prison Visitation.” In The Palgrave Handbook of Prison and the Family. Edited by Marie Hutton and Dominique Moran, 81–98. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Comfort, Megan L.In the Tube at San Quentin: The ‘Secondary Prisonization’ of Women Visiting Inmates.Journal of Contemporary Ethnography 32, no. 1 (2003): 77107.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Comfort, Megan L. “Punishment Beyond the Legal Offender.” Annual Review of Law and Social Science. 3 (2007): 271–96CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Comfort, Megan L. Doing Time Together: Love and Family in the Shadow of the Prison. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Comfort, Megan L. “‘A Twenty-Hour-A-Day Job’: The Impact of Frequent Low-Level Criminal Justice Involvement on Family Life.” The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science. 665 (2016): 63–79.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
deVuono-Powell, Saneta, Chris, Schweidler, Alicia, Walters, and Azadeh, Zohrabi. Who Pays? The True Cost of Incarceration on Families. Oakland, CA: Ella Baker Center, Forward Together, Research Action Design, 2015. https://ellabakercenter.org/who-pays-the-true-cost-of-incarceration-on-families/ Google Scholar
Eife, Erin, and Gabriela, Kirk. “‘And You Will Wait’: Carceral Transportation in Electronic Monitoring as Part of the Punishment Process.” Punishment & Society 23, no. 1 (2021): 6987.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Emerson, Robert M., Fretz, Rachel I., and Shaw, Linda L.. Writing Ethnographic Fieldnotes. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Feeley, Malcolm M. The Process Is the Punishment: Handling Cases in a Lower Criminal Court. New York: Russel Sage Foundation, 1979.Google Scholar
Geertz, Clifford. The Interpretation of Cultures: Selected Essays. New York: Basic Books, Inc., 1973.Google Scholar
Girshick, Lori B. Soledad Women: Wives of Prisoners Speak Out. Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers, 1996.Google Scholar
Gonzalez Van Cleve, Nicole. Crook County: Racism and Injustice in America’s Largest Criminal Court. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2016.Google Scholar
Grinstead, Olga, Bonnie, Faigeles, Carrie, Bancroft, and Barry, Zack. “The Financial Cost of Maintaining Relationships with Incarcerated African American Men: A Survey of Women Prison Visitors.Journal of African American Men 6, no. 1 (2001): 5969.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hairston, Creasie F., and Oliver, William. “Women’s Experiences with Men’s Incarceration and Reentry.” Women, Girls, & Criminal Justice 7 no. 5 (2006): 6580.Google Scholar
Harris, Alexes. A Pound of Flesh: Monetary Sanctions as Punishment for the Poor. New York: Russell Sage, 2016.Google Scholar
Harris, Alexes, Heather, Evans, and Katherine, Becket. “Drawing Blood from Stones: Legal Debt and Social Inequality in the Contemporary United States.American Journal of Sociology 115, no. 6 (2010): 1753–99.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hinton, Elizabeth. From the War on Poverty to the War on Crime: The Making of Mass Incarceration in America. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2016.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hoffmann, Heath, Byrd, Amy L., and Kightlinger, Alex. M.. “Prison Programs and Services for Incarcerated Parents and Their Underage Children: Results from a National Survey of Correctional Facilities.The Prison Journal 90, no. 4 (2010): 397416.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Human Rights Watch “‘Not in It for Justice.’: How California’s Pretrial Detention and Bail System Unfairly Punishes Poor People.” 2017. https://www.hrw.org/sites/default/files/report_pdf/usbail0417_web_0.pdf.Google Scholar
Kita, Mari. “Proxy Punishment: Consequences of Informal Sanctions among Families of Offenders in Japan.Journal of Qualitative Criminal Justice & Criminology 6, no. 1 (2018): 127.Google Scholar
Kohler-Hausmann, Issa. “Misdemeanor Justice: Control without Conviction.American Journal of Sociology 119, no. 2 (2013): 351–93.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kohler-Hausmann, Issa. “Managerial Justice and Mass Misdemeanors.Stanford Law Review. (2014): 611–94.Google Scholar
Kohler-Hausmann, Issa. Misdemeanorland: Criminal Courts and Social Control in an Age of Broken Windows Policing. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2018.Google Scholar
Kopak., Albert M., and Dorothy, Smith-Ruiz.Criminal Justice Involvement, Drug Use, and Depression Among African American Children of Incarcerated Parents.Race and Justice 6, no. 2 (2016): 89116.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lara-Millan, Armando. “Theorizing Financial Extraction: The Curious Case of Telephone Profits in the Los Angeles County Jails.Punishment & Society 23, no. 1 (2021):107–26.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
La Vigne, Nancy G., Elizabeth, Davies, and Diana, Brazzell. “Broken Bonds: Understanding and Addressing the Needs of Children with Incarcerated Parents.Washington, DC: Urban Institute, Justice Policy Center, 2008.Google Scholar
Lopoo, Leonard M., and Bruce, Western. “Incarceration and the Formation and Stability of Marital Unions.Journal of Marriage and Family 67, no. 3 (2005): 721–34.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lowenkamp, Christopher T., Marie, VanNostrand, and Alexander, Holsinger. “The Hidden Costs of Pretrial Detention.” Arnold Foundation, 2013. https://craftmediabucket.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/PDFs/LJAF_Report_hidden-costs_FNL.pdf.Google Scholar
Luban, David. “Paternalism and the Legal Profession.Wisconsin Law Review 3 (1981): 454–98.Google Scholar
Miller, Reuben J. Halfway Home: Race, Punishment, and the Afterlife of Mass Incarceration. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 2021.Google Scholar
Muhammad, Khalil G. The Condemnation of Blackness, Race, Crime, and the Making of Modern Urban America. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nurse, Anne. Fatherhood Arrested: Parenting from Within the Juvenile Justice System. Nashville, TN: Vanderbilt University Press, 2002.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Oleson, J.C., Lowenkamp, Christopher T., Cadigan, Timothy P., VanNostrand, Marie, and Wooldredge, John. “The Effect of Pretrial Detention on Sentencing in Two Federal Districts.Justice Quarterly 33, no. 6 (2016): 1103–22.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Olson, David E., and Tahier, Sema. “Population Dynamics and the Characteristics of Inmates in the Cook County.” Chicago: Cook County Sheriff’s Reentry Council, 2012. https://ecommons.luc.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1000&context=criminaljustice_facpubs.Google Scholar
Page, Joshua, Piehowski, Victoria, and Soss, Joe. “A Debt of Care: Commercial Bail and the Gendered Logic of Criminal Justice Predation.RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences 5, no. 1 (2019): 150–72.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Phillips, Mary T. A Decade of Bail Research in New York City. New York: New York City. Criminal Justice Agency, 2012.Google Scholar
Richie, Beth E. “Understanding the Links between Violence Against Women and Women’s Participation in Illegal Activity.” Submitted to the US. Department of Justice, 2002. https://www.ojp.gov/pdffiles1/nij/grants/199370.pdf.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sacks, Meghan, and Ackerman, Alissa R.. “Bail and Sentencing: Does Pretrial Detention Lead to Harsher Punishment?Criminal Justice Policy Review 25, no. 1 (2012): 5977.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Saldaña, Johnny. The Coding Manual for Qualitative Researchers. London: Sage Publishing, 2009.Google Scholar
Sawyer, Wendy, and Peter, Wagner. “Mass Incarceration: The Whole Pie 2020.” Prison Policy Initiative, 2020. https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2020.html.Google Scholar
Schlesinger, Traci. “Racial and Ethnic Disparity in Pretrial Criminal Processing.Justice Quarterly 22, no. 2 (2005): 170–92.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schlesinger, Traci. “Racial Disparities in Pretrial Diversion: An Analysis of Outcomes Among Men Charged With Felonies and Processed in States Courts.Race and Justice 3, no. 3 (2013): 210–38.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Visher, Christy, and Jill, Farrell. “Chicago Communities and Prisoner Reentry.” Urban Institute, 2005. https://www.urban.org/sites/default/files/publication/42891/311225-Chicago-Communities-and-Prisoner-Reentry.PDF.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wakefield, Sara, Hedwig, Lee, and Christopher, Wildeman. “Tough on Crime, Tough on Families? Criminal Justice and Family Life in America. The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 665 (2016): 821.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Western, Bruce, and Sara, McLanahan.Fathers Behind Bars: The Impact of Incarceration on Family Formation.Contemporary Perspectives in Family Research 2 (2000): 309–24.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wildeman, Christopher, Jason, Schnittker, and Kristin, Turney. “Despair by Association? The Mental Health of Mothers with Children by Recently Incarcerated Fathers.American Sociological Review 77, no. 2(2012): 216–43CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wiseman, Samuel R.Pretrial Detention and the Right to be Monitored.The Yale Law Journal. 123, no. 5 (2014): 1344–404.Google Scholar