By Tanisha Pierrette, Senior Research Analyst & Lillian Patil, Senior Analyst, State & Local Budgets
This is part 4 of our six-part blog series, Reforming the Revenue Machine: An Advocate’s Guide to to Court Fines and Fees. Each post unpacks findings from Imposing Instability — our national report on how courts use fines and fees to raise revenue — and turns them into tools you can use in campaigns for reform. In this series, you’ll find clear takeaways, examples of what’s happening on the ground, and strategies to strengthen reform efforts in your community.
Missed a post? You can read the full series here.
In Imposing Instability, we examined not only how much courts impose, but how much they actually collect. The answer? Less and less every year.
From FY2018 to FY2022, median state collections from court-imposed fines and fees fell by 33 percent— and they never recovered, even after the COVID-19 fiscal crisis eased. And with ongoing economic uncertainties, high inflation, and cuts to critical public benefits for low-income people, many families continue to feel a significant financial crunch, reducing their ability to pay fines and fees even further.
This steep, sustained revenue decline spells trouble for state budgets that rely on it year after year to fund public operations and programs — relying on fines and fees revenue is a risky business.
Unlike taxes, fines and fees aren’t tied to wealth or broad economic activity. They’re tied to the criminal legal system — and the people most entangled in it. That makes them uniquely unstable. You can’t fund essential government services by extracting money from people who ultimately lack the means to pay. So, it’s no surprise that collections have declined over time. But this isn’t just a fiscal concern — it has deep consequences for communities.
The Hidden Cost of Banking on Court Debt
Jurisdictions that rely on fines and fees to fund public programs are building budgets for the communities they serve based on the hope of people violating the law. They are tying essential services to the assumption that arrests, prosecutions, and convictions will continue at higher rates than what the trends show. Worse, they are betting on the ability of people with limited incomes to pay debts they often cannot afford. When projected fine and fee revenue dollars don’t materialize—whether from legal system involvement declining or because working-class people can’t afford to pay the fines and fees imposed on them, this puts vital services at risk of being underfunded. In Tennessee, the Bureau of Investigation faced a $4 million deficit for four straight years because courts couldn’t collect the fees it relied on. That’s not just a funding “shortfall,” it’s a warning sign of the instability baked into fine and fee reliance.
Our research found that many state and local governments already know this money won’t materialize. A cohort of budget offices we looked at routinely projected lower collections each year, and those projections have largely proved accurate. Despite clear signs e that the system is falling short, officials continue to carry on these ill-fated attempts to collect revenue.
This practice doesn’t just harm individuals—it undermines public institutions. Courts waste time trying to collect money from people who cannot pay. Families fall deeper into poverty. And governments expose themselves to the financial risk of an unstable revenue stream. Ultimately, everyone loses—especially those caught in the cycle of court debt and enforcement.
How Advocates Can Take Action
Step 1: Expose the Instability of Fine and Fee Revenue
Advocates can lead the charge to end government dependence on fines and fees by exposing the instability and unsustainability of this revenue stream. Start by highlighting the difference between what’s imposed and what’s collected in your jurisdiction. Then, look at how collections are changing over time to see if revenue is becoming less stable and declining over a number of years. Use public budget documents, court annual reports, or direct data requests to reveal these patterns. Whenever possible, go further by examining the true cost of collecting this revenue. Factor in staff time, enforcement efforts, and the staggering expenses of supervising or incarcerating people for nonpayment.
Step 2: Hold Budget Officials Accountable
If budget officers already acknowledge the problem in their internal projections, ask why that hasn’t translated into policy change. Shine a light on the irrationality of continuing to impose fines and fees that local fiscal experts acknowledge won’t be collected. Help lawmakers recognize that the current approach is not only unjust, but also fiscally irresponsible. Remind them that maintaining the current fines and fees system is expensive, costing them payroll dollars and wasting the labor of public safety staff who spend valuable time in often-futile efforts to collect, from court clerks to judges to police.
Step 3: Advocate for Phasing Out Fines and Fees as a Funding Source
Urge lawmakers and budget officials to phase out fines and fees from public funding models altogether. Advocate for replacing these unstable revenues with more reliable and equitable sources, like general fund appropriations or targeted tax policies. If full replacement isn’t feasible in the short term, call for shifting fine and fee revenues out of baseline budgets and into reserve funds or pots for one-time discretionary spending—so agencies don’t become dependent on them year after year.
Finally, push for stable, equitable public funding models. Essential services—from court technology to public defense—should be funded through legislative appropriations, not extracted from people facing criminal charges. For strategies on navigating such conversations with lawmakers, watch our webinar, Navigating the Revenue Impacts of Reform.
Communities That Have Taken Action
- Virginia: Advocates examined five recent years of data on state public defender fees. They found that only 3% of fees that were imposed were collected that same year, and the fee revenue has decreased by 33% over five years. Though the legislature did not ultimately pass the 2024 bill that aimed to eliminate this fee, uncovering the instability in fee collections has helped make clear the risk maintaining this fee poses to governments.
- New Mexico: FFJC’s internal analysis of various court post-adjudication fees in New Mexico revealed a 25% decline in collections between FY2017 and FY2022. In 2023, New Mexico passed legislation eliminating all of these fees, thereby ensuring that courts and New Mexicans do not have to depend on an unstable source of revenue to fund programs and services throughout the government.
Moving away from such unstable revenue sources can strengthen both budgets and communities, but as the examples above show, the road to get there requires data transparency. Without precise data from budget offices showing exactly how fine and fee revenue is used—and which services take the hit when collections fall—decision-makers are left guessing. This lack of visibility makes it far easier for officials to cling to the status quo, even when the numbers show the system is failing. When governments can see, in black and white, that collections are unreliable and the costs of enforcement often outweigh the dollars brought in, it becomes harder to justify continuing the practice.
Advocates should push for this transparency. By demanding budget reports that track the actual contribution of fines and fees, their allocation, and the consequences of shortfalls, you create the evidence needed to drive change.
Stay tuned to this series for more insight on how to turn the data from Imposing Instability into action. In our next blog, we’ll discuss how unpaid fines and fees can lead to incarceration.