Courts as Revenue Centers Archives - Page 15 of 19

Minnesota HF 3358: Public safety commissioner required to report on driver’s license suspensions and revocations

This statute would require the Commissioner of Minnesota’s Department of Public Safety to report annually on driver’s license suspensions and revocations to the legislature and the public. The report must …

No One Is Watching: Jail in Upstate New York

This article, part of the Vera Institute’s In Our Backyard Stories series, documents the incarceration practices in the small upstate city of Amsterdam, New York.

Mecklenburg County District Court Bench Cards

The Mecklenburg County working group requested the assistance of Harvard Law School’s Criminal Justice Policy Program, which helped the group develop two bench cards. One bench card provides guidance for judges when imposing fines and fees; the other outlines a process for sanctioning defendants who fail to pay fines and fees.

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.

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.

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.