How do members of racial and ethnic groups explain the origins of unpaid legal debt from monetary sanctions, and how do such attributions undergird group differences in support for policy responses that escalate punishment? Using data from the Chicago Area Finances Survey, 2019, we apply an attributional typology of stratification beliefs to account for why legal debt from fines, fees, and tickets goes unpaid. We find differences in attribution types along key measures of socio-demographics and political values, and we identify racial differences in these attributions when other measures are held constant. How people understand why legal debt goes unpaid shapes their policy preferences as well, and they explain a small but significant fraction of racial and ethnic differences in the desire for punitive recourse.

种族和族裔群体的成员如何解释货币制裁未付的法律债务的起源，以及这种归因如何在支持惩罚性升级的政策对策上造成群体差异？使用来自2019年《芝加哥地区财务调查》的数据，我们采用分层信仰的归因类型学来解释为什么罚款，费用和罚单所产生的法律债务没有偿还。我们发现社会人口统计学和政治价值观的关键度量在归因类型上存在差异，并且在其他度量保持不变的情况下，我们在这些归因中发现了种族差异。人们如何理解为什么法律债务没有偿还也影响了他们的政策偏好，并且解释了在惩罚性求助的欲望中种族歧视的一小部分，但很大一部分。