Pennsylvania’s 2015 House Bill 2043 mandates that courts provide community service and payment plans as alternatives for people who would experience manifest hardship if they had to pay all of their fines and fees at once.
Iowa Senate Bill 2316 makes changes to Iowa’s court debt collection practices. The amendments allow people to enter into a payment plan for court debt and outline the process for modifying payment plans when people are unable to pay.
West Virginia Senate Bill 634 established the state’s second chance driver’s license program. The program allows for temporary stays of driver’s license suspensions and revocations so that people who have unpaid fines and fees can retain gainful employment and settle their court debt.
This bill invited criminal justice system stakeholders to participate in a work group to develop a plan and program to consolidate drivers’ traffic fines and fees from multiple Washington courts into “unified and affordable” payment plans.
In this essay, Marsh and Gerrick challenge the most common justification for why debtors’ prisons still exist in present-day America: generating revenue to fund local government and courts. The authors argue that revenue generation is an “incomplete explanation” for debtor’s prisons and point to a variety of other factors that could help complete the picture.
This Act modifies provisions related to driver’s license suspensions. Specifically, it (1) terminates suspensions imposed because of a person’s failure to appear on a criminal traffic offense charged before July 1, 1990.
This Act reduces the amount of fees charged to individuals who receive a minor traffic or municipal ordinance violation and changes the procedure for charging fines and fees to people who receive minor traffic or municipal ordinance violations.
To finance its carceral system, the United States government levies taxes on the country’s most impoverished strata. Although those involved in the justice system are typically low-income individuals, they are …
This research paper “examines the contributing factors which make collection of felony fines and [fees in Florida] significantly lower than collections for all other case types” and analyzes why felony collection enforcement is especially difficult.