It is important that we understand debt collection so that we can change it.

One-in-four Americans has had a debt turned over to a collector—a number that climbs to one-in-three in communities of color. Every year, millions of people are sued over that debt, and most face the court alone, without a lawyer and without anyone tracking what happens to them. Debt collection lawsuits crowd state civil court dockets across the country, yet remarkably little public data exists about who is being sued, where, and why outcomes differ so sharply from one neighborhood to the next.

The Debt Collection Lab at Princeton University exists to change that. We build public-facing tools and research that bring this hidden system into view. Our debt collection tracker monitors lawsuits in real time across multiple states, letting advocates, researchers, and the public see which communities are hardest hit, where racial and economic disparities show up, and how often people end up in court without representation.

We pair data with storytelling. Alongside our research, we use art and visualization to reframe the conversation about debt—because it's one thing to cite a statistic, and another to show what it means in the lives of real families. Our goal is simple: it is important that we understand debt collection so that we can change it.