What Do We Know About Community Service?
Host Matt Watkins of New Thinking interviewed Harry Glenn and James Brodick from the Center for Court Innovation (CCI) and Joanna Weiss from the Fines and Fees Justice Center about …
Proportionate Financial Sanctions: Policy Prescriptions for Judicial Reform
In this report, the Criminal Justice Policy Program (CJPP) at Harvard Law School proposes a framework where courts would impose means-adjusted fines as a proportionate sentence for an offense. The authors assert that by adopting the proposed recommendations, courts can ease or prevent the worst harms that excessive financial sanctions create for poor people without waiting for legislative reforms.
Addicted to Fines: Small towns in much of the country are dangerously dependent on punitive fines and fees
This GOVERNING report presents the findings of a nationwide analysis of several jurisdictions' fine and fee revenue rates and how much of this funding source supports general budgets.
Digital Jail: How Electronic Monitoring Drives Defendants Into Debt
This article describes the fundamental issues with electronic monitoring by private companies through the experience a St. Louis, Missouri resident.
Can’t Pay, Can’t Vote: A National Survey On The Modern Poll Tax
Felony convictions and court debt have become barriers to restoring voting rights for millions of people living in the U.S. This report provides a history of poll taxes and explains how felony disenfranchisement serves as a barrier perpetuating the same inequality-producing results: African-Americans and poor people lose the right to vote and struggle to regain voting rights at disproportionate rates.
Court-Ordered Community Service: A National Perspective
Community service mandates date back to the late 1960s as an alternative to incarceration for nonviolent crimes. It has since evolved into a component of monetary sanctions or probation rather …
Martha Wright-Reed Just and Reasonable Communications Act of 2019
The Martha Wright-Reed Just and Reasonable Communications Act clarifies that the Federal Communications Commission – an agency housed within the Executive branch of the federal government – has the legal authority to stop prison phone companies from charging exorbitant fees to incarcerated people.
Justice “cost points”: Examination of privatization within public systems of justice
This study explores how local and state governments allow corporations to generate profits from public criminal justice institutions and examines how that structure harms people forced to pay for private services.
New Data: Low Incomes – But High Fees – For People On Probation
The imposition of unaffordable probation fees punishes poverty and places them at risk of being jailed when they cannot pay. Most states charge monthly probation fees, while others use “reasonableness” …
Commercialized (In)justice: Consumer Abuses in the Bail and Corrections Industry
This report examines two concerning trends: the increasing use of fines and fees to fund the criminal legal system, and functions of that system being outsourced to private companies who profit from the criminal legal system.