Debtors’ Prison for Kids? The High Cost of Fines and Fees in the Juvenile Justice System
This report documents how and when youth and families face fines, fees and restitution and the economic and legal consequences for failure to pay.
Racial Disparities
Sharecropper Finance: Using the Justice System as a Public Revenue Source
This article compares the fines and fees practices of Ferguson, Missouri and other municipal governments with the older economic technique of sharecropping.
Taxing the Poor: Incarceration, Poverty Governance, and the Seizure of Family Resources
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 …
Not Just a Ferguson Problem: How Traffic Courts Drive Inequality in California
This 2015 report provides a comprehensive overview of how California’s approach to the enforcement of fines and fees for traffic violations creates a two-tiered justice system—those who can afford to pay escape the system, while those who are too poor to pay are trapped.
Investigation of the Ferguson Police Department
After Michael Brown was shot by a member of the Ferguson Police Department, the Department of Justice’s investigation uncovered a pattern of racially discriminatory practices by the Ferguson Police Department which were primarily rooted in the city’s dependence on the criminal justice system to raise revenue. The publication of the Ferguson report is widely viewed as the start of the movement to reform fines and fees in the U.S.
Shadow Citizens: Felony Disenfranchisement and The Criminalization of Debt
Many states infringe on individuals’ rights to vote; nearly 5.58 million Americans have lost the right to vote due to criminal convictions–many of them people of color and the poor. …
In For A Penny- The Rise of America’s New Debtors’ Prisons
This publication uses personal accounts of people in five different states who struggled to pay their court debt to illustrate the negative effects of debtors’ prisons on individuals, the economy, and the justice system.
Driver’s License Suspensions, Impacts and Fairness Study
This report relays findings from a study about the effects of driver’s license suspensions in New Jersey. For years, license suspensions have been imposed on motorists for reasons unrelated to public safety (i.e. to enforce payment of fines and fees), and this research suggests that residents of urban and low-income neighborhoods are more vulnerable to suspension than others.