Local Policy Guide: Fee Elimination and Debt Relief
This local policy guide gives local leaders a recommended process for eliminating fees via local legislation, budgetary processes and through the courts.
Local Policy Guide: Make Jail Phone Calls Free and Eliminate Commissions and Kickbacks on Commissary Items
This local policy guide gives local leaders three reform pathways for ensuring incarcerated people have access to basic needs and free communication.
How Corporations Turned Prison Tablets Into a Predatory Scheme
Tablets have become another commodity that predatory corporations use to price gouge incarcerated people. In 2017, JPay distributed free mini-tablets to the prison population in New York, providing access to …
Dreams Deferred: The Impact of Juvenile Fees on Florida’s Children, Families, and Future
This report outlines the catastrophic consequences of juvenile fee debt for Florida’s children, families, and economy including: increased poverty, increased recidivism, and the exacerbation of racial disparities in the justice system.
FFJC Policy Guidance: Eliminating Criminal Legal System Fees and Discharging Debt
Fines and Fees Justice Center (FFJC) presents policy guidance for local and state leaders on how to eliminate criminal legal fees and forgive debt.
Local Policy Guide: Reforming Debt-Based Driver’s License Suspensions at the Local Level
This guide is designed to give local leaders the tools, process and resources they need to reform debt-based driving restrictions at the local level.
Equitable Approaches to Municipal Fines and Fees
The assessment and collection of fines and fees can have wide-ranging harmful consequences, particularly for Black and Latino people who are more likely to be targeted by the criminal justice …
Show Me The Money: Tracking The Companies That Have a Lock on Sending Funds to Incarcerated People
To pay for the everyday costs of being incarcerated, family members historically sent money orders to prisons, the amounts which would be added to the recipient’s trust account one to …
Blood From a Stone: How New York Prisons Force People To Pay For Their Own Incarceration
The prison system amplifies the lack of commissary access to basic needs and telecommunications for the most disadvantaged people in prison and drains financial resources from them and their families. …
Elimination of Cash Bail In Illinois: Financial Impact Analysis
As of January 2023, Illinois courts can longer require cash bail for criminal defendants. Previously, courts would deduct fines, fees, and assessments from bond payments and retain 10 percent of …