Statutory monetary penalties and legal financial obligations across Massachusetts law from 1692 to 2025. The dataset includes identifiable statutory observations, amendments, and updates associated with fines, surcharges, court costs, restitution, and related sanctions. It was developed by the Legal Systems and Policy Lab at George Mason University as part of the Justice Funding Database research series.
Use Cases
- Analyze longitudinal trends in statutory fines based on the 1692–2025 time range mentioned in the description
- Compare the application of different financial sanctions like surcharges and restitution across legal statutes
- Study the frequency and impact of statutory amendments on monetary penalties over time
Strengths
- Covers a long temporal range from 1692 to 2025
- Includes multiple types of financial obligations such as fines, surcharges, court costs, and restitution
- Built on prior Justice Funding Database research examining longitudinal changes
Limitations
- Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download
- Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment
Provenance
- Source
- Legal Systems and Policy Lab at George Mason University, part of the Justice Funding Database research series
- Collection Method
- Records were collected through longitudinal review of digitized statutory materials from Nexis Uni and the Massachusetts General Laws repository
- Time Range
- 1692–2025
- Freshness
- Last updated 2026-05-18 17:41:24; freshness should be verified
- Geography
- Massachusetts, United States