Kasey Henricks
American
Kasey Henricks is a sociologist at the University of Tennessee in the United States. He studies the role of race and racism in the reproduction of inequality with a focus on public finance. Using the City of Chicago as a case study, his ongoing work identifies how parking tickets issued under false pretenses nevertheless generate large sums of revenue for privatized interests contracted with the state.
Manufactured Disorder: The Racist Consequences of Parking Tickets Issued in Error
“Manufactured Disorder” is a case study of Chicago that centers parking tickets written under false pretenses. Much of the work on monetary sanctions details the relationship between levels of fines and fees, on one hand, and a culture of punishment, on the other. As important as these inquiries are, a question they leave unexplored is whether the punishments they quantify were the result of legitimate infractions. The common data practice of accepting crime numbers as a given creates an intellectual interdependency between researchers and the state, where the latter’s definition of the situation is laundered through interpretations offered by the former. “Manufactured Disorder” returns to the category of crime to trouble what it marks and who is marked by the consequences of these policing processes. The project outlines an alternative episteme for the study of fines and fees.
