Court-imposed fines as a feature of the homelessness-incarceration nexus: a cross-sectional study of the relationship between legal debt and duration of homelessness in Seattle, Washington, USA
Open accessAbstract
Background: Legal system involvement is a policy-driven risk factor for homelessness. Legal financial obligations (LFOs), such as court fees, fines and restitution, can endanger the financial security of those ensnared in the criminal justice system. In this study we measured the effect of incarceration and LFOs on duration of homelessness in Seattle, WA, USA. Methods: To analyze the relationship between incarceration, debt and duration of homelessness, we interviewed 101 adults experiencing homelessness and living in city-sanctioned encampments and tiny house villages in Seattle, WA in 2017–18. We collected personal housing history, presence and amount of debt, and measures of legal system involvement. Results: Our respondents experienced homelessness an average of 41 months during the current episode. Nearly two-thirds reported being convicted of a crime, and 78% had been incarcerated. More than 25% reported owing current legal fines. Individuals with legal fine debt experienced 22.9 months of additional homelessness after considering the effects of race, age, and gender. Conclusion: We confirmed a strong association between homelessness and legal trouble. Among high-income countries, the USA has the highest rates of legal system involvement and the highest rates of homelessness; the relationship between the two may be connected.
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Claims the paper makes
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Claims other papers make about this one
Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?
People who owe LFO debts face difficulties finding housing.
“face difficulties finding housing (Harris et al., 2010; Mogk, Shmigol, Futrell, Stover, & Hagopian, 2019)”
From Debt, Incarceration, and Re-entry: a Scoping Review (2021) · cites this paper as Mogk, Shmigol, Futrell, Stover, & Hagopian, 2019
The Results (Respondent characteristics as predictors of duration of homelessness) associate outstanding LFOs with a longer current episode of homelessness among surveyed people in Seattle. That supports a link to housing instability, but the paper does not establish that LFO debt itself makes finding housing difficult; its separate finding about difficulty finding permanent housing concerns arrest history (Results, Incarceration and LFO history). (LLM, conf=0.85)
Experimental — accuracy not yet measured
Self-check
Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.
The self-check needs the paper’s full text.
Cites
Fazel, S., Geddes, J. R., & Kushel, M. (2014) · The Lancet · doi:10.1016/s0140-6736(14)61132-6 · Cited by 1,568 · see citing works
Revolving Doors: Imprisonment Among the Homeless and Marginally Housed Population
Kushel, M. B., Hahn, J. A., Evans, J. L., Bangsberg, D. R., & Moss, A. R. (2005) · American Journal of Public Health · doi:10.2105/ajph.2005.065094 · Cited by 287 · see citing works
Flagged first, then by citations
Research works printed but not linked: 20
- [1]Donovan S, Shinseki EK. Homelessness is a public health issue. Am J Public Health 2013; 103(Suppl): S180. doi: 10.2105/AJPH.2013.301727. 24256062 PMC3969122 · DOI
- [2]Schanzer B, Dominguez B, Shrout PE Homelessness, health status, and health care use. Am J Public Health 2007; 97(3): 464– 9. doi: 10.2105/AJPH.2005.076190. 17267724 PMC1805022 · DOI · Paper page
- [7]National Alliance to End Homelessness. The State of Homelessness in America. Homelessness Res Inst. 2016. doi: 10.4324/9780203051580. · DOI
- [10]Allgood S, Warren RS. The duration of homelessness: Evidence from a national survey. J Hous Econ 2003; 12(4): 273– 90. doi: 10.1016/j.jhe.2003.09.001. · DOI
- [11]Carol CLM, Dominguez B, Schanzer B Risk Factors for Long-Term Homelessness: Findings From a Longitudinal Study of First-Time Homeless Single Adults. Am J Public Health 2005; 95(10): 1753– 9. doi: 10.2105/AJPH. 16131638 PMC1449432 · DOI
- [12]Johnson G, Tseng Y-P, Scutella R Understanding lifetime homeless duration: investigating wave 1 findings from the Journeys Home project. Aust J Soc Issues 2016; 48(1): 83– 110. doi: 10.1002/j.1839-4655.2013.tb00272.x. · DOI
- [13]Shlay AB, Rossi PH. Social science research and contemporary studies of homelessness. Annu Rev Sociol 2003; 18(1): 129– 60. doi: 10.1146/annurev.so.18.080192.001021. · DOI
- [14]Mabhala MA, Yohannes A, Griffith M. Social conditions of becoming homelessness: qualitative analysis of life stories of homeless peoples. Int J Equity Health 2017; 16(1): 150. doi: 10.1186/s12939-017-0646-3. 28830515 PMC5568348 · DOI
- [15]Mayock P, Sheridan S. ‘At home’ in prison? Women and the homelessness-incarceration nexus. Irish Probat J 2013; 10: 118– 40. http://www.pbni.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/IPJ-Vol-10-2013.pdf#page=120. Accessed June 18, 2017.
- [16]Gowan T. The nexus: homelessness and incarceration in two American cities. Ethnography 2002; 3(4): 500– 34. doi: 10.1177/1466138102003004007. · DOI
- [18]Olson J, MacDonald S, Rankin S. Washington’s War on the Visibly Poor: A Survey of Criminalizing Ordinances & Their Enforcement. Seattle Univ Sch Law Homeless Rights Advocacy Proj. 2015. doi: 10.2139/ssrn.2602318. · DOI
- [19]Greenberg GA, Rosenheck RA. Jail incarceration, homelessness, and mental health: a national study. Psychiatr Serv 2008; 59(2): 170– 7. doi: 10.1176/ps.2008.59.2.170. 18245159 · DOI · Paper page
- [24]Metraux S, Culhane DP. Recent incarceration history among a sheltered homeless population. Crime Delinq 2006; 52(3): 504– 17. doi: 10.1177/0011128705283565. · DOI
- [25]Harris J, Martin RE, Filek H Familial support impacts incarcerated women’ s housing stability. Hous Care Support. 2015; 18(3/4): 80– 8. doi: 10.1108/HCS-05-2014-0012. · DOI
- [30]Winn Scott. Leading with a Racial Equity Lens for Structural Transformation. In: Seattle: University of Washington School of Social Work; 2017. https://socialwork.uw.edu/ssw-news/lecturer-scott-winn-leads-workshop-racial-equity-april-21. Accessed March 18, 2019.
- [31]Runnels V, Hay E, Sevign E The ethics of conducting community-engaged homelessness research. J Acad Ethics 2009; 7(1–2): 57– 68. https://www.homelesshub.ca/resource/ethics-conducting-community-engaged-homelessness-research. Accessed March 18, 2019.
- [33]Brunette W, Sundt M, Dell N Open Data Kit 2.0: Open Data Kit 2.0: Expanding and refining information services for developing regions. ACM HotMobile 2013: The 14th Workshop on Mobile Computing Systems and Applications; 2013. doi: 10.1145/2444776.2444790. · DOI
- [34]McHorney CA, Ware JE, Lu JF The MOS 36-item Short-Form Health Survey (SF-36): III. Tests of data quality, scaling assumptions, and reliability across diverse patient groups. Med Care 1994; 32(1): 40– 66. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8277801. Accessed April 2, 2018. 8277801
- [37]Lurie K, Schuster B, Rankin S. Discrimination at the Margins: The Intersectionality of Homelessness & Other Marginalized Groups. Seattle Univ Sch Law Homeless Rights Advocacy Proj. 2015. doi: 10.2139/ssrn.2602532. · DOI
- [39]Covin L. Homelessness, poverty, and incarceration: the criminalization of despair. J Forensic Psychol Pract 2012; 12(5): 439– 56. doi: 10.1080/15228932.2012.713835. · DOI
Cited by
Sorted by citations
Debt, Incarceration, and Re-entry: a Scoping Review
Harper, A., Ginapp, C., Bardelli, T., Grimshaw, A., Justen, M., Mohamedali, A., Thomas, I., & Puglisi, L. (2021) · American Journal of Criminal Justice · doi:10.1007/s12103-020-09559-9 · Cited by 76 · see citing works
- Authors
- Mogk, J., Shmigol, V., Futrell, M., Stover, B., & Hagopian, A.
- Affiliations
- University of Washington (US)
- Corresponding author
- Mogk, Jessica
- Venue
- Journal of Public Health
- Publisher
- Oxford University Press (OUP)
- Published
- 2019-06-04
- Volume
- 42
- Issue
- 2
- Pages
- e107-e119
- ISSN
- 0943-1853 (ISSN-L)
- 1741-3842
- 1741-3850
- PMC
- PMC8059694
- OpenAlex
- W2948409069
- Cited by
- 25
- References
- 2
- Citations by year
- 2026: 3 · 2025: 3 · 2024: 5 · 2023: 2 · 2022: 4 · 2021: 2 · 2020: 5 · 2019: 1
- FWCI
- 4.08
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
- Licence
- academic.oup.com/journals/pages/open_access/funder_policies/chorus/standard_publication_model (vor)
- Locations
- Journal of Public Health (publishedVersion)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Funders
- Northwest Center for Public Health Practice
- NIH
- Topics
- Health Sciences › Health Professions › General Health Professions › Homelessness and Social Issues
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Criminal Justice and Corrections Analysis
- Health Sciences › Medicine › Epidemiology › HIV, Drug Use, Sexual Risk
- Keywords
- homelessness, incarceration, legal financial obligations, duration of homelessness, criminal justice involvement, encampment, Seattle
- MeSH terms
- Adult, Cross-Sectional Studies, Ill-Housed Persons, Housing, Humans, Social Problems, Washington
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
