Beginning January 1st, 2014, Wisconsin imposed a $200 surcharge on misdemeanor defendants found guilty in the Milwaukee Circuit Court. This paper examines the economic impact of the mandatory surcharge and its effects on recidivism. The author analyzed court records of all non-traffic misdemeanor and felony cases from January 2001 to September 2019 and found large fines and fees encouraged more costly crime, disproportionately hurt disadvantaged groups, and raised few dollars.
You can read the full text here.
Key Findings:
- An increase of $200 in misdemeanor fees correlated to an increase in felony recidivism, although overall recidivism rates remained constant. In other words, the fee is associated with more severe reoffending.
- An increase of $200 in misdemeanor fees created a net social welfare cost of $1,548 per case to the state.
- The author calculated “social welfare costs” based on the likelihood of those with the higher fee recidivating at the felony level within 2 years.
- Costs of such recidivism were estimated both in terms of median incarceration costs plus scholarly estimates of the impacts a felony offense has on victims and communities.
- The $200 increase in fees resulted in collections of only $0.28 on the dollar by the 5.5 year mark. Of the money that was collected, 46 percent of it came from the retention of pretrial bail payments rather than proactive fee payment post-sentencing.
- The $200 increase in fees increased the probability that a defendant would be subject to a civil judgment for unpaid fines, fees, and court costs by 13.6 percent.
Note: This study supplants an earlier working paper by the author that had previously been listed in FFJC’s Clearinghouse under the working title of The (Non) Economics of Criminal Fines and Fees. That earlier paper is no longer publicly available.