Fines, Fees, and the Poverty Penalty
This issue brief discusses how fines and fees harm communities and puts forward several strategies that prosecutors can use to mitigate these harms.
Courts as Revenue Centers
Justice Derailed: A case study of abusive and unconstitutional practices in Colorado city courts
This case study of municipal courts in Colorado is based on a multi-year ACLU investigation which revealed that despite a bipartisan reform effort in the state legislature, many of Colorado’s municipal courts persistently ignore both constitutional standards and state law and continue to employ practices that punish defendants for their poverty.
Targeted Fines and Fees Against Communities of Color
The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights issued a landmark report detailing the disproportionate harms that communities of color suffer from fines and fees.
Local revenue structure under economic hardship: reliance on alternative revenue sources in California counties
Sanghee Park uses data gathered from California counties over an 11-year period to investigate how local economic conditions affect a jurisdiction’s reliance on fines and fees. Park argues that local governments attempt to generate revenue through fines and fees more often when their budgets suffer due to a lack of property, sales, and income tax revenue.
San Francisco Fines & Fees Task Force: Initial Findings and Recommendations
In late 2016, San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors directed the Office of the Treasurer and Tax Collector to create a Fines and Fees Task Force (staffed by the Treasurer’s Financial Justice Project) to study the impact of fines and fees on San Franciscans & propose relevant reforms. About six months later, the Task Force published this initial report in order to provide an overview of fines and fees in San Francisco as well as an array of reform recommendations.
Criminal Justice Debt Reform Builder
The Criminal Justice Debt Reform Builder is an online tool that allows users to quickly explore and assess fines and fees reform statutes in all 50 states.
The Price of Being Poor: How Fines and Fees Entrench Inequality and What Has to Change [Panel]
As part of the Aspen Institute’s 2017 Summit on Inequality and Opportunity, this panel discussion was convened to discuss problems posed by fines and fees practices. During the panel, Rev. …
Not One but Many: Monetary Punishment and the Fergusons of America
In this article for Sociological Forum, Professors Kasey Hendricks and Daina Cheyenne Harvey examine whether Ferguson’s fines and fees practices are typical among local governments.
Ending the Debt Trap: Strategies to Stop the Abuse of Court-Imposed Fines and Fees
Alexandra Bastien of PolicyLink describes how the imposition of criminal justice fines and fees disproportionately impacts people of color and low-income Americans.
Pay or Stay: The High Cost of Jailing Texans for Fines and Fees
This joint report by Texas Appleseed and the Texas Fair Defense Project evaluates how often fine-only offenses - offenses punishable only by a fine and no jail sentence – in fact subject Texans to jail time and suspensions of driver’s licenses or the inability to renew a license or register a vehicle because of their inability to pay.