Ipse Dixit Podcast: Andrea Bopp Stark & Geoffrey Walsh on Carceral Bankruptcy

By: Andrea Bopp Stark, Geoff Walsh

October 4, 2022 — Podcast Appearances

Season 1, Episode 762 of the Ipse Dixit podcast aired on Oct. 4, 2022.

Andrea Bopp Stark and Geoffrey Walsh discuss their work on fines and fees in bankruptcy case, with a particular focus on their article, Sentenced to a Life of Debt: It Is Time for a Reassessment of How Bankruptcy Law Intersects with Fines and Fees to Keep People in Debt. Geoff and Andrea explain how state and local governments have funded mass incarceration through the imposition of fines and fees in the criminal law arena and how this undermines many of the policy rationales articulated by the Supreme Court in Kelly v. Robinson, which made it much more difficult to discharge criminal justice debt in bankruptcy cases. They discuss possible solutions, including treating this debt like tax debt and why an analogy to tax debt is better than an analogy to student loan debt.

This episode was hosted by Matthew Bruckner, an associate professor at Howard University School of Law. Bruckner is on Twitter at @Prof_Bruckner.