In August 2018, New York City Council passed Intro 0741, making NYC the first U.S. city to agree to make all phone calls free for people who are incarcerated in city jails.
The Durham County District Attorney’s office and the Bloomberg-funded Durham Innovation Team partnered to create the Durham Driver Amnesty Program. In its pilot phase, the District Attorney dismissed 2,500 pending charges for eligible participants which kept them from obtaining their driver’s license.
The ability to hire an attorney in either a civil or criminal proceeding can result in an experience that is procedurally and substantively different than that of someone who is …
The Council of the District of Columbia unanimously amended the District of Columbia Traffic Adjudication Act of 1978 to eliminate the suspension of drivers’ licenses for unpaid traffic debt or failure to appear at hearings.
This bench card was created as part of a 2016 settlement agreement in Kennedy v. Biloxi, an ACLU lawsuit against the city of Biloxi, Mississippi, where defendants could avoid incarceration only if they paid their fines and fees immediately, in full, with cash.
This 2015 Orlando Sentinel article describes how waiving surcharges assessed by collection agencies for one weekend led the Orange County Clerk of Courts to lower the rate these companies could charge going forward.
This brief provides background information on criminal justice system fines, fees, and bail and argues that these costs disproportionately impact poor people.