RT Article
T1 Credit Scoring as a Carceral Practice: An Abolitionist Framework
JF Race and social problems
VO 16
IS 2
SP 230
OP 248
A1 Friedline, Terri
A2 Stewart, Kimberlee
A2 Bolinger, Carson
A2 Wood, Anna K.
LA English
YR 2024
UL https://krimdok.uni-tuebingen.de/Record/1888278854
AB The practice of credit scoring is ubiquitous in today’s economy. Three-digit credit scores or their underlying data are applied well beyond the lending decisions for which they were originally designed and are routinely used in the contexts of employment, housing, and more. Drawing on carceral logics and abolitionist politics, we develop a framework to critically interpret the practice of credit scoring. We theorize credit scoring as a carceral practice and technology in the afterlife of slavery that expands anti-black discipline and punishment. We suggest that credit scoring is incapable of objectively assessing risk and that claims of objectivity legitimize an exploitative system of evaluation that mediates people’s access to the means of survival. Moreover, credit scoring expands the scope of how people are conscripted into consumerism and disciplined and punished under racial capitalism. We review research literature on credit scoring as a step toward applying this framework and demonstrate how research provides an alibi for anti-black racism embedded in contemporary credit scores. We conclude with a call to abolish the practice of credit scoring and imagine new, abolitionist alternatives for people to live safely and with dignity.
K1 Racial capitalism
K1 Abolition
K1 Surveillance
K1 Slavery
K1 FICO
K1 Credit score
DO 10.1007/s12552-023-09406-6