News

Salience, Incentives, and Timely Compliance: Evidence from Speeding Tickets

As monetary sanctions in law enforcement have become increasingly more prevalent and their budgetary significance non-trivial, little is known about why certain behavioral interventions increase compliance in some contexts but …

Personal Narrative: Charlene

Not having a driver's license because of unpaid fines and fees was yet another burden that Charlene Cintron carried as a Floridian who is disabled, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Ankle Monitors Are Replacing Cash Bail, But At A Cost

This article discusses how people who are court-ordered to participate in electronic monitoring bear the burden of the program costs and the risk of being jailed for nonpayment.

Report on the Economic Well-Being of U.S. Households in 2019, Featuring Supplemental Data from April 2020

For the first time, the Federal Reserve collected information about how criminal legal debt from fines and fees affects American families.

Maryland HB36: Juvenile Proceedings – Fines, Fees, and Costs

This bill eliminates the authority of Maryland courts to impose civil fines or court costs against a juvenile found delinquent.

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.

Robinson v. Purkey [Robinson v. Long]

County Clerks in Tennessee automatically suspend the driver’s license of persons who fail to pay their traffic debt within a 30-90 day window.

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.