Examining the Hidden Costs of Justice: A Multi-State Study of Monetary Sanctions
For millions of people in the United States, contact with the criminal legal system does not end when a sentence is imposed. Instead, it often continues through monetary sanctions—court-ordered fines, fees, and legal financial obligations that can shape individuals’ lives long after formal supervision ends. Despite their prevalence, these sanctions remained surprisingly understudied for decades.
Over nearly a decade, Sarah Shannon, associate professor of Sociology at the University of Georgia and an Owens Institute for Behavioral Research Distinguished Scholar, has been part of a national research effort that fundamentally reshaped how scholars and policymakers understand monetary sanctions and their consequences.
A National Collaboration with a Southern Lens
Shannon’s involvement began in 2015 with the Multi-State Study of Monetary Sanctions, a large-scale, mixed-methods project funded by Arnold Ventures. The original proposal included seven states, but the state of Georgia was later included to strengthen the study’s geographic and political scope. A colleague recommended Shannon, whose expertise and location made Georgia a strong fit.
That initial collaboration continued into a second project, the Monetary Sanctions Collective, which expanded the research beyond individual states to examine broader social, economic, and community-level impacts. Across both projects, the research spanned roughly 2015 to 2023, creating one of the most comprehensive bodies of work on monetary sanctions in the United States.
Why Monetary Sanctions Matter
Monetary sanctions—often referred to as legal financial obligations (LFOs) or “fines and fees”—are a widespread but frequently overlooked component of the criminal legal system. They function simultaneously as punishment, a source of government revenue, and a mechanism that can extend criminal supervision long after a case is otherwise resolved.
Findings from the multi-state research show that these sanctions impose significant financial burdens on millions of people, disproportionately affecting Black and Latinx individuals. Rather than promoting accountability, fines and fees often trap people in cycles of debt, poverty, and continued justice system involvement. Families and communities absorb these costs as well, while courts and related institutions can become distorted by reliance on monetary extraction.
What distinguished the first project was its scope and depth. Spanning eight states over five years, the study examined laws, court practices, administrative data, and lived experiences. By integrating legal analysis, quantitative data, and in-depth interviews, the research offered the most comprehensive picture to date of how monetary sanctions are structured, imposed, and experienced—and how they reproduce inequality across the United States.
The second project, the Monetary Sanctions Collective, broadened that lens further. In addition to documenting harm, the team focused on identifying pathways for reform. This phase of the research examined promising interventions, the experiences of people who owe both criminal justice debt and child support (“dual debtors”), the role of monetary sanctions in generating community-level poverty, and alternatives to restitution for youth in juvenile courts.
Making Research Accessible
The first project culminated in a double issue of the open-access Russell Sage Foundation: Journal of the Social Sciences (Volume 8, Issues 1and 2), making the findings widely available to scholars, policymakers, advocates, and community members. Publications from the second project are still forthcoming, but early results from Shannon’s work have appeared in Socius, continuing the commitment to accessible, policy-relevant scholarship.
Training the Next Generation of Researchers
An important—and especially meaningful—dimension of the monetary sanctions research has been student mentorship. Because the projects involved multiple forms of data collection and analysis, Shannon was able to engage teams of graduate and undergraduate students at UGA as research mentees. Shannon noted, “This collaborative, team-based approach to research has been one of the most rewarding aspects of the work.”
Looking Ahead
Shannon’s research agenda continues to evolve in interdisciplinary and public-facing directions. She is currently working on a grant-funded study of the Georgia Department of Community Supervision’s person-centered model of supervision, in collaboration with colleagues in UGA’s School of Social Work and the Ralston Institute for Behavioral Health and Developmental Disabilities. The project includes analysis of administrative case files, video-recorded interactions between probation officers and people under supervision, and field visits to community supervision offices across the state.
She is also collaborating with a colleague in UGA’s History Department on a public-facing scholarly project using the Guthrie v. Evans (1972–1985) collection at the Richard B. Russell Library for Political Research and Studies. The project examines prison revolt and reform litigation in the 1970s and explores how those histories inform contemporary debates about prison conditions and reform. Planned outputs include a documentary-style podcast and multimedia website aimed at reaching national—and potentially international—audiences, with future external funding applications likely to foundations or the National Endowment for the Humanities.
Research with Purpose
Across her work, Shannon brings a consistent commitment to research that matters. Drawing on a career in nonprofit work before entering academia, she approaches scholarship as both a means of generating new knowledge and a way to inform policy and practice that directly affect people’s lives.
Written by: Andrea Horsman
February 4, 2026