Roelif Carter pled guilty and was assessed fines and fees. Fear of jail coerced Mr. Carter to make the payment until he simply could not afford to do so.
Keilee Fant is a 37-year-old certified nurse assistant and single mother who was arrested for unpaid traffic tickets while taking her children to school. She was jailed over 12 times in 20 years for her inability to pay the debt.
Contact with the criminal legal system often results in the assessment of fines and fees. For people who are indigent or subject to other financial obligations such as child support …
This video by Human Rights Watch shows how private probation companies can strip people of basic necessities and jail them because they can’t afford to pay their court debt and exorbitant probation fees.
This guide by the American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators discusses how suspending driver’s licenses for non-safety related reasons is ineffective and counter-productive: it diminishes the deterrent effect and perceived legitimacy of license suspension, as well as the efficacy of law enforcement, prosecutors, courts, and motor vehicle agencies.
Many states infringe on individuals’ rights to vote; nearly 5.58 million Americans have lost the right to vote due to criminal convictions–many of them people of color and the poor. …
Legal financial obligations (LFO) used to supplement rather than replace other punishments, have resulted in legal debt for millions of mainly poor residents. In this paper, the authors argue that …
This publication uses personal accounts of people in five different states who struggled to pay their court debt to illustrate the negative effects of debtors’ prisons on individuals, the economy, and the justice system.