The Impact of Criminal Financial Sanctions: A Multistate Analysis of Survey and Administrative Data

We estimate the impact of financial sanctions in the US criminal justice system, leveraging nine natural experiments in a regression discontinuity design framework across a diverse range of enforcement levels ($17–$6,000) and institutional environments. We leverage survey and administrative data to consider a variety of short- and long-term outcomes, including employment, recidivism, household expenditures, and other self-reported measures of well-being. We find robust evidence of precise null effects, including ruling out long-run impacts larger than −$391–$142 in annual earnings and −0.001–0.01 in annual convictions, with no corresponding payment increases despite salient and heterogeneous enforcement mechanisms. (JEL G51, H76, J31, K14, K41, K42)