Court actors—judges, prosecutors, defense attorneys, probation officers, and court clerks— manage conflicting priorities and contradictory logics when it comes to how legal financial obligations (LFOs) are assessed in the U.S. criminal legal system. Drawing on interviews with 447 court actors across eight states, the authors analyze how court actors make sense of fines, fees, and restitution amidst competing institutional priorities. The researchers identified three priorities for monetary sanctions: penal, rehabilitative, and fiscal logics. Penal logics frame LFOs as tools for punishment, accountability, deterrence, and retribution, while rehabilitative logics emphasize personal responsibility and behavioral change. Fiscal logics, by contrast, position LFOs as mechanisms for generating revenue to support court operations and broader governmental functions. The findings from this report show that court actors endorse multiple logics simultaneously, though a substantial number articulate discomfort with the revenue-generating aspects of LFOs, describing them as conflicting with punishment and rehabilitation or as unfair given defendants’ limited ability to pay. The study identifies several strategies court actors use to manage tensions between competing logics, including exercising discretion, prioritizing certain goals over others, and framing fiscal practices as unavoidable necessities in under-resourced court systems. These practices allow court actors to continue their work even when they perceive contradictions in the purposes of monetary sanctions.
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Key Findings:
- While 54 percent of judges, 51 percent of prosecutors, and 48 percent of probation officers reported that LFOs are proportional to offenses frequently or almost always, only 20 percent of defense attorneys expressed this view.
- Monetary sanctions continue to be imposed and enforced due to statutory mandates, institutional funding pressures, and limited discretion, especially regarding mandatory fines and fees.