Solome Haile, a Sociology doctoral student at Princeton University, will speak on “Money Instead of Change”: How Civil Compensation for Police Violence Shapes Claimants’ Views of the State.”

The talk will focus on the years since the unprecedented scale of both protests and police violence that distinguished 2020 from other years, one of the most concrete actions that came from that period were not reform initiatives but civil rights suits payouts. As municipal leaders and attorneys described the monetary awards as emblematic of “justice,” “care,” and “reconciliation” on the part of the municipal governments towards those the police brutalized, questions about the litigants’ interpretations of the money, its exchange, and its implications for their understanding of the police and state were left unanswered by both the media and the extant literature. Drawing upon 30 in-depth interviews, this study bridges the literatures on the socio-legal studies of police misconduct suits, civil litigants’ evaluative experiences of the legal system, and the social meaning of money to ask: “What meaning(s) do recipients attribute to the money they receive? What does this suggest about how the payouts may be shaping their perception of and relationship to the state?” I find that litigants conceptualize the money signifying the state’s desire to silence and suppress, engendering a sense of obligation to take their redistributive aims and desire for social transformation into their own hands. Ultimately, these findings present an intriguing case where redress backfires and further ruptures the relationship the litigants have with the state.

To attend virtually or to request a copy of the paper, contact Kim Murray.

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