Alex Stein (Israel Supreme Court) & Gideon Parchomovsky (University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School) have posted Beyond the Prison Wall: Refundable Fines as an Alternative to Incarceration (104 Washington University Law Review (2026)) on SSRN. Here is the abstract:
In this Essay, we introduce the refundable fine, a novel mechanism designed to rehabilitate low-to mid-level first-time offenders and to improve the criminal justice system without reliance on incarceration. A refundable fine is a monetary penalty returned to the offender—in installments or, in exceptional cases, in one payment—over a certain period if no further crimes are committed. Unlike traditional fines, refundable fines can be structured to provide individually tailored rehabilitative incentives for offenders. First, the installment period of the repayment can vary in length depending on the characteristics of the offense and the offender. Second, the payment frequency intervals can be long, short, intermediate, or variable. The sentencing judge may order the repayments to be made annually, every six months, every single month or, in exceptional cases, in one installment upon successful rehabilitation. As with traditional fines, the refundable fine’s amount will correlate with the seriousness of the offender’s misdeed. We argue that introduction of refundable fines can reduce the rates and the costs of incarceration dramatically and create a more fair and humane criminal justice system that provides meaningful incentives for offenders to avoid committing further crimes.
Highly recommended.