The Department of Sociology Fall 2023 Colloquium Series Presents: Faith Deckard
Colloquia Title and Topic:
"Widening the Carceral Net through Financial Risk: The Case of Commercial Bail"
How are people without direct contact impacted, and in some instances, implicated in the criminal legal system? To answer this question, I examine the underexplored process of bonding a loved one out of jail and focus on the most common mode of doing so: commercial bail. Drawing on data from a multiple-sited ethnography and interviews with 3 population groups, I find that the bail bond system infuses financial risk into the carceral sphere, beyond its traditional concern of legal risk (e.g., risk of recidivism). Bail agents, as the industry’s frontline actors, operate as market lenders and in turn require cosigners. When this standard business model is applied in a criminal legal context, it makes non-charged, cosigning family members legible to the market and carceral system, thus widening the net of those engaged. Because this oppressive financial obligation and risk does not replace but rather merges with carcerality, family members are subjected to dual logics of control that doubly penalize them and coerce them into surveilling and further penalizing defendants. In consequence, defendants and their intimate associations bear the burden of risk management and, ultimately, institutional maintenance. More generally, intermediary organizations are identified as active players in state legibility projects that "read", organize, and entangle families.