Welcome to FFJC’s latest blog series, Reforming the Revenue Machine: An Advocate’s Guide to Fines and Fees, designed to help advocates translate the data found in Imposing Instability into actionable steps to drive reform.
National trends are clear: fines and fees are being used as revenue tools, not instruments of justice.
For decades, state and local governments have relied on fines and fees imposed on individuals in the criminal legal system as a way to fill budget gaps. Our latest report, Imposing Instability, demonstrates how this perverse funding system not only traps people in cycles of debt and legal entanglement but undermines the financial stability of the very governments that rely on it.
And while many might have assumed that the amount of fines and fees imposed would be directly tied to the number of cases, our report suggests this is not necessarily the case.
Even as court caseloads declined during the pandemic, many jurisdictions continued assessing fines and fees at nearly the same levels as before the pandemic — underscoring how deeply embedded revenue generation is in the justice system.
It’s time for bold reforms that eliminate fees and minimize onerous fines and replace them with sustainable and equitable funding alternatives that do not destabilize communities.
This multi-part blog series will help advocates translate the data found in Imposing Instability into actionable messaging and steps you can use in campaigns for reform. Each blog will highlight key takeaways, connect national trends to what’s happening on the ground, and offer strategies to push for reform in your own community.
Explore data and insights from Imposing Instability.
This series will serve as a tool for advocates in several key areas of reform: eliminating court fees, advocating for general fund reform, ending the use of bench warrants for unpaid court debt, and identifying other collateral consequences that communities may face due to court debt.
Part 1: Translating National Data Into Local Action
The billions of dollars imposed through fines and fees overwhelmingly hurt those least able to afford them. Just one encounter with the legal system can lead to long-term financial punishment.
Relying on partial data provided from just 24 states, local and state courts imposed nearly $14 billion in fines and fees on individuals involved with the legal system over a five-year period. This figure is a conservative estimate; 26 states and the District of Columbia did not provide any imposition data. Of the 24 states that did, only ten provided a complete accounting of fines and fees imposed across traffic offenses, municipal violations, misdemeanors, and felonies. The true national total of fines and fees imposed over the last five years is likely more than double.
Everyday people are often forced to choose between paying rent, buying groceries, or keeping the lights on, and paying off their court debt. That same $14 billion could be used to cover essential utility bills for over 614,000 households for five full years.
By combining data on the amount of fines and fees imposed with criminal caseloads from seven geographically diverse states, we found that the median amount imposed per person was $2,984. To put this in context, even for someone earning $15/hour, they must work nearly 200 hours — or five weeks of full-time labor — just to pay off court debt for a single case. That is, of course, assuming they spend no money on food, rent, or other basics. Those making the federal minimum wage of $7.25/hour will have to work more than 400 hours, or approximately ten weeks of full-time labor, to pay off their court debt. The people facing these high costs are often those least able to pay. Fine and fee debt doesn’t just punish poverty, it entrenches it in communities across the country.
Learn how fines and fees financially strain families in our Debt Sentence report.
The imposition of unpayable fines and fees hurts everyone.
When local and state governments prioritize imposing large fines and fees to fund their budgets, the result is a justice system that prioritizes generating revenue over public safety and fairness. Yet research shows that fines and fees don’t deter crime — they may increase it. Rather than promoting accountability, the financial pressure these sanctions impose can push people into desperate situations. A study in New Mexico found that two out of five people with court debt admitted they had committed a crime at some point just to pay off their fines and fees. This suggests a system that is said to be aimed at promoting accountability, in reality, is driving people towards high-risk or illegal behavior simply to avoid the consequences of nonpayment.
Governments’ focus on fine and fee imposition is even more alarming when you consider so many courts fail to track the amount of fines and fees they impose, leaving community members and government partners in the dark about the breadth, scope, and instability of these purported revenue streams. Additionally, the life-altering criminal and civil penalties for nonpayment should mean that the government, at a bare minimum, is being held accountable for tracking the breadth of punishments it is imposing on its communities.
How can advocates use national data on fine and fee impositions to drive local action in your community?
Step 1: Use the appendices in Imposing Instability to determine if your state provided information on the fines and fees it imposes on your community and how they compare to those of other states and national trends.
- If your state provided data, review whether it provided complete data on criminal offenses, municipal violations, and traffic offenses, and understand what that data represents. Understanding how impositions and collections are playing out in your specific state is critical. Even if your state’s numbers don’t perfectly align with the national trend, those differences can reveal important dynamics, and advocates should dig into the reasons why.
- If your state is among the 26 states that did not provide data, this is your call to action. Advocates working at the local level can still submit or renew requests for data on impositions, collections, and enforcement tactics (such as bench warrants) to state officials. An inability to provide data or a blatant refusal to do so does not necessarily indicate a lack of harm, but rather a lack of transparency, oversight, and accountability. This is a powerful narrative that advocates can use to highlight why urgent reform is needed. Without its own data, a state cannot credibly argue that it is different from the national patterns identified in the report.
Step 2: Zoom in to assess the impact of fines and fees on your local community.
Statewide change may not always be the best or easiest road to reform; sometimes, reform begins not at the state capitol, but in the courtroom down the street. Let’s say you’re in Louisville, Kentucky. The state didn’t report any imposition data, but that doesn’t mean the courts aren’t handing out fines and fees. You can begin gathering local court data by leveraging relationships with local clerks or through public records requests, budget documents, or local online data dashboards. Translating impact at the local court and community levels can often be helpful.
Once you have data, Imposing Instability serves as a model for conducting your own investigations on a local level. For example, in those states where fine and fee data were specific to criminal cases, we were able to calculate an average of nearly $3,000 in fines and fees imposed per case. If you can get data on impositions from your local courts, you can calculate an average debt imposition specific to where you want to do reform. You can then translate that to how long it would take to work off that debt under the local minimum wage, or compare that debt with monthly utility or housing costs in your area. If you can’t get local data, use what we report here for national trends and challenge local officials to prove – with data – that your locality is somehow different.
With a more localized focus, you can even go further than we did by collecting demographic data of those who are ordered to pay fines and fees and comparing it with population data from the U.S. Census Bureau for your area. This can help identify who is being hit the hardest and whether there are racial, economic, or gender disparities in who is being required to pay court fines and fees. The more you can localize the national story, the more power you have to make it resonate with your audience. When elected officials hear statistics about their own constituents, it’s harder to look away.
Step 3: Use your local data to uncover patterns, disparities, and policy failures.
With your local data in hand, look for trends that uncover whether your local court practices reflect broader patterns of instability, inequity, or an overreliance. Use your findings to humanize the impact on real people. Question whether courts routinely impose monetary sanctions without any consideration of a person’s ability to pay. Framing your findings in this broader context helps draw attention to systemic issues and how courts often impose monetary sanctions without considering a person’s financial status.
Advocates can also consider whether the fines and fees our courts impose locally are mandatory or discretionary. Discretionary fines and fees can often be waived or reduced by judges, whereas mandatory costs are typically imposed by statute, court rule, or regulation. Even when they are mandatory, fine or fee amounts often come in the form of a range that still provides some level of local discretion. Knowing who controls these decisions — whether it’s a local court administrator or the state legislature — will help you focus your efforts where they’ll have the greatest impact.
Local data may be limited, but national trends are clear: fines and fees are being used as revenue tools, not instruments of justice. Using that framing to call for ability-to-pay assessments, to eliminate fees, and highlight the hidden harm of the system — especially its disproportionate impact on low-income residents and communities of color — can help shift the conversation. This isn’t just about justice reform— it’s about fairness, fiscal responsibility, and restoring integrity to public institutions.
Communities That Have Taken Action
Across the country, jurisdictions are taking meaningful steps to address the harms of fines and fees. While some communities are leading the charge with fee elimination campaigns, others are working to mitigate the harms of fines and fees. These reforms — ranging from judicial guidance to legislative change — demonstrate that alternatives to the current system are both possible and underway.
- California: All California courts are now required to use an online ability to pay tool, known as MyCitations, which allows individuals with traffic tickets to request a fine reduction online. From its initial pilot in half a dozen sites starting in 2019 to full statewide implementation by June 2024, approximately 264,000 need-based requests were made through the system, from 194,000 individuals, resulting in judges reducing most citations by an average of 61%. California’s data shows that ability to pay is intrinsically tied to whether a person complies with court orders: for every $100 increase in the fine amount ordered, there was a corresponding 10% decrease in the likelihood of full payment (i.e., a 10% decrease in compliance). When the amount ordered was less than $100, more than 70% of people complied in full.
- North Dakota (2025): The state enacted a bill, HB 1417, that eliminates supervision and counsel fees and requires an interim study of all criminal fees.
- Texas: The Texas Office of Court Administration introduced judicial bench cards to help judges apply existing law when assessing fines and fees. The bench cards have one key reminder: after sentencing, judges must ask whether a defendant has the ability to pay, a critical safeguard often overlooked in practice.
- Virginia (2025): The state enacted a bill, HB 1661, requiring all Virginia courts to offer flexible monthly payment plans for court debt, ensuring fairer and more consistent treatment across all 120 jurisdictions.
Are you ready to take up the mantle of fines and fees reform? The Fines and Fees Justice Center (FFJC) offers evidence-informed guidance for jurisdictions implementing ability-to-pay assessments, payment plans, or community service as alternatives to monetary sanctions.
Stay tuned to this series for more insight on how to turn data into actionable steps. Up next, we’ll unpack what it means when courts in your community impose more in fees than fines and what that reveals about the system’s priorities.