On Thin Ice: Bureaucratic Processes of Monetary Sanctions and Job Insecurity
This article shows how court debt collection practices affect employment opportunities based on research conducted in Illinois and Washington State.
Municipal Fines and Fees: A 50-State Survey of State Laws
This report, including an interactive map, provides a 50-state analysis of state laws that regulate municipal imposition and collection of fines and fees. The analysis is based on 52 factors, organized into 7 broad categories, that measure the extent to which state laws “prohibit, sustain, encourage or neutralize” municipal reliance on fines and fees.
Driving Toward Justice: How ending driver’s license suspensions for unpaid traffic tickets helps communities without impacting court collections
This brief describes reforms that were implemented after the San Francisco Superior Court’s decision to eliminate debt-based driver’s license suspensions.
The Explosion of Unpaid Criminal Fines and Fees in North Carolina
The amount of debt owed to North Carolina’s criminal courts has increased at a staggering rate. This report gives a scope of how much debt is uncollectible, identifies the people in the state most harmed by the current system, and pinpoints the case types that yield the lion’s share of this debt.
Fines and Monetary Sanctions
Alexes Harris, the author of this research papers, discusses various criminal legal system fines and fees and argues that imposing these costs can worsen social inequality.
Driven to Failure: An Empirical Analysis of Driver’s License Suspension in North Carolina
Through the analysis of four decades of individual and county level suspension data, this study describes North Carolina’s population of drivers whose licenses have been suspended and assesses how driver’s …
The Crippling Costs of the Juvenile Justice System: A Legal and Policy Argument for Elimination Fines and Fees for Youth Offenders
Across the country, youth and their families, many in poverty, face monetary charges for their involvement in the juvenile justice system, and the consequences can be devastating. In this article, …
Debt Bondage: How Private Collection Agencies Keep the Formerly Incarcerated Tethered to the Criminal Justice System
In Washington, the clerk of courts can transfer the legal financial obligations of incarcerated people to a private debt collection agency if they are thirty days late making a payment. …
Driving While Black and Latinx: Stops, Fines, Fees, and Unjust Debts
This paper presents data suggesting that Black, Latinx, and poor people in New York disproportionately suffer the consequences of driver’s license suspensions due to traffic ticket debt and racially disproportionate traffic enforcement.
In Trouble: How the Promise of Diversion Clashes With The Reality of Poverty, Addiction, And Structural Racism In Alabama’s Justice System
This Alabama Appleseed report stems from a survey of 1,011 justice-involved Alabamians. The author provides recommendations for lawmakers, programs, and courts to follow to improve the effectiveness and fairness of diversion.