Racial Disparities Archives - Page 12 of 18 - Fines and Fees Justice Center

Report on the Economic Well-Being of U.S. Households in 2019, Featuring Supplemental Data from April 2020

For the first time, the Federal Reserve collected information about how criminal legal debt from fines and fees affects American families.

Driving Toward Justice: How ending driver’s license suspensions for unpaid traffic tickets helps communities without impacting court collections

This brief describes reforms that were implemented after the San Francisco Superior Court’s decision to eliminate debt-based driver’s license suspensions.

The Explosion of Unpaid Criminal Fines and Fees in North Carolina

The amount of debt owed to North Carolina’s criminal courts has increased at a staggering rate. This report gives a scope of how much debt is uncollectible, identifies the people in the state most harmed by the current system, and pinpoints the case types that yield the lion’s share of this debt.

Fines and Monetary Sanctions

Alexes Harris, the author of this research papers, discusses various criminal legal system fines and fees and argues that imposing these costs can worsen social inequality.

Driven to Failure: An Empirical Analysis of Driver’s License Suspension in North Carolina

Through the analysis of four decades of individual and county level suspension data, this study describes North Carolina’s population of drivers whose licenses have been suspended and assesses how driver’s …

Driving While Black and Latinx: Stops, Fines, Fees, and Unjust Debts

This paper presents data suggesting that Black, Latinx, and poor people in New York disproportionately suffer the consequences of driver’s license suspensions due to traffic ticket debt and racially disproportionate traffic enforcement.

In Trouble: How the Promise of Diversion Clashes With The Reality of Poverty, Addiction, And Structural Racism In Alabama’s Justice System

This Alabama Appleseed report stems from a survey of 1,011 justice-involved Alabamians. The author provides recommendations for lawmakers, programs, and courts to follow to improve the effectiveness and fairness of diversion.

Racial Disparities