Personal Narrative: Laqueanda Reneau
Reneau got 15 tickets in a single year, including 7 $200 citations for not having a city sticker. She turned to Chapter 13 bankruptcy for debt forgiveness.
Illinois HB 4594: The Criminal and Traffic Assessment Act
Broadly speaking, the Act streamlines, standardizes, and reduces court fees in order to facilitate a sliding scale fee waiver for defendants who cannot afford to pay. (Without these changes, the sliding scale would have been severely limited.)
Illinois HB 5341: Amendment, Criminal Identification Act Section 5.2
This bill provides that a court cannot deny a petition to seal or expunge a criminal record simply because the individual has not satisfied outstanding court debt, and waives certain fees that apply to expungement applications.
United States Systems of Justice, Poverty and the Consequences of Non-Payment of Monetary Sanctions: Interviews from California, Georgia, Illinois, Minnesota, Missouri, Texas, New York, and Washington
This report is a culmination of a year of research that involved interviews conducted with 380 people who made contact with systems of justice in eight states and were assessed fines and fees.
Personal Narrative: Jared
"The court fines for Virginia were $611 as well as a $150 driver's license reinstatement fee to the Virginia DMV. Once my case was transferred to Illinois, where I live, I was charged by my home county another $600 for probation services fees. In total, court fees cost me $1361."
Monetary Sanctions in the Criminal Justice System
This review of law and policy is the first-year report of a five-year study comprising quantitative and qualitative research that provides a detailed understanding of how fines and fees are imposed and enforced across the United States.
Who Pays? The True Cost of Incarceration on Families
This report is the result of a collaborative research project from 20 community-based organizations that studied the costs of incarceration on families across 14 states.
Criminal Justice Debt: A Barrier to Reentry
This seminal report examines fines and fees practices in the fifteen U.S. states with the highest prison populations, focusing on “user fees” and their impact on individuals reentering society after incarceration.