‘A Noose Around the Neck’: Financial Penalties, Extended Enforcement, and Barriers to Rehabilitation

ABSTRACT

Fines are commonly assumed to be non-disruptive sanctions, creating no barriers to rehabilitation or reintegration. In this paper, which draws on interviews with nine community justice practitioners in Scotland, I show how fines enforcement is a neglected aspect of contemporary punishment, one which often obstructs prospects for rehabilitation and reintegration. Practitioners described how extended entanglement in enforcement creates a form of ‘liminality’ that inhibits the identity transformation which is often central to desistance. Financial penalties add burdens precisely when people are attempting to stabilise their lives. As such, repeated fines and their enforcement can derail desistance. My analysis reveals contradictions between fines enforcement and rehabilitative aims of sentencing. Where rehabilitation requires stability, material resources, and relational support, enforcement erodes all three. This paper argues for new evaluations of the ‘leniency’ of fines, ones that recognise how fines and financial penalties can undermine rehabilitative aims across punishment systems.