About | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline
LOG IN
LOG IN

55 Am. Crim. L. Rev. 333 (2018)
Day Fines: Reviving the Idea and Reversing the (Costly) Punitive Trend

handle is hein.journals/amcrimlr55 and id is 343 raw text is: DAY FINES: REVIVING THE IDEA AND REVERSING THE (COSTLY) PUNITIVE TREND Elena Kantorowicz-Reznichenko* Pecuniary punishments should always be regulated by the fortune of the offender The relative amount of the fine should be fixed, not its absolute amount.... INTRODUCTION For more than four decades, the United States has operated under tough on crime policies. This approach has led to the well-known prison crisis. Over the years, the number and costs of prisons in the United States has increased, the overcrowding problem has expanded, and court orders mandating the release of prisoners have become a common practice.2 In the last four decades, imprisonment became the ordinary sanction.3 Consequently, in 2015, the United States witnessed an astonishing rate of 666 prisoners per 100,000 of the national population.4 This expedited growth in incarceration led to the absurd situation where Americans constitute five percent of the global population, yet detain twenty-five percent of the world's prisoners.5 This is a costly policy for the American taxpayer. For example, in 2015, California spent over 8.5 billion dollars on prisons alone,6 or approximately twenty-three million dollars per day.7 * Rotterdam Institute of Law and Economics (RILE), Erasmus School of Law, Erasmus University Rotterdam. I would like to thank Michael Faure, Christoph Engel, Louis Visscher, Paul Mevis, Anne-Lise Sibony, and Claire Mansfield for their valuable comments. In addition, I am grateful to the participants of the 1st Topics Workshop in Criminology at Erasmus University Rotterdam, Law and Market Behaviour International Research Network Conference in Dublin, and faculty seminars at Bologna University and at Erasmus University Rotterdam for their useful suggestions. Lastly, I would like to express my gratitude to Jaroslaw Kantorowicz for all his comments and support. All possible mistakes remain, however, my own. © 2018, Elena Kantorowicz-Reznichenko. 1. JEREMY BENTHAM, THEORY OF LEGISLATION 353 (R. Hildreth trans., Kegan Paul, Trench, Triibner & Co. 1891). 2. See, e.g., Brown v. Plata, 131 S. Ct. 1910 (2011). In this case, the Supreme Court ordered the State of California to reduce prison overcrowding from around 200% of its designed capacity to 137.5%. Id. at 1924. For more information on the extent of prison overcrowding, see Reid Wilson, Prisons in These 17 States Are Over Capacity, WASH. POST (Sept. 20, 2014), https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/govbeatwp/2014/09/20/prisons- in-these- 17-states-are-filled-over-capacity/; see also Howard Bodenhorn, Prison Crowding, Recidivism, and Early Release in Early Rhode Island, 59 EXPLORATIONS ECON. HisT. 55 (2016). 3. James Q. Whitman, Equality in Criminal Law: The Two Divergent Western Roads, 1 J. LEGAL ANALYSIS 119, 148 (2009). 4. United States ofAmerica World Prison Brief, INT'L CTR. FOR PRISON STUD., http://www.prisonstudies.org/ country/united-states-america (last visited Nov. 5, 2017). 5. SUZANNE M. KIRCHHOFF, CONG. RESEARCH SERV., R41177, ECONOMIC IMPACTS OF PRISON GROWTH 9 (2010). 6. CHRIS MAI & RAM SUBRAMANIAN, VERA INST. OF JUSTICE, THE PRICE OF PRISONS: EXAMINING STATE SPENDING TRENDS, 2010-2015, at 8 tbl.1 (2017). 7. Id. 333

What Is HeinOnline?

HeinOnline is a subscription-based resource containing thousands of academic and legal journals from inception; complete coverage of government documents such as U.S. Statutes at Large, U.S. Code, Federal Register, Code of Federal Regulations, U.S. Reports, and much more. Documents are image-based, fully searchable PDFs with the authority of print combined with the accessibility of a user-friendly and powerful database. For more information, request a quote or trial for your organization below.



Short-term subscription options include 24 hours, 48 hours, or 1 week to HeinOnline.

Purchase Access

Contact us for annual subscription options:

Contact Us

Already a HeinOnline Subscriber?

Log In

profiles profiles most