The Crime Report (https://thecrimereport.org/tag/cash-register-justice/)
In 2016, San Francisco became the first city and county in the nation to reexamine a system of court costs that imposed a crushing burden on tens of thousands of low-income residents. Nearly four years later, it reports impressive results.
Alabama prosecutors’ offices get as much as 70 percent of their budgets from the collection of court fees. With courts closed during the pandemic, that could mean they run out of money within months.
Unpaid court fees and fines affecting one in 12 North Carolina residents are adding to the burden of coping with the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a report from Duke University Law School.
As state and local governments take a financial hit during COVID-19, some localities are relying on a tried-and-true revenue stream: the court system and the predominantly low-income people who churn through it.
A recent state Supreme Court order set in motion measures to end some money bonds and stop penalizing people for failure to pay court fines and fees in an effort to slash jail populations. Other states have followed suit in a trend long recommended by advocates. But will it last once the pandemic is over?
Although Curtis Lovelace was acquitted in the 2006 murder of his wife, he was still saddled with a hefty county administrative fee. Local court systems across the country depend on such fees for badly needed revenue, but are they fair?
Lawyers argued that three court fees charged by Ferguson — failure to appear, “warrant recall” and letter fees — had no beneficial value other than to generate revenue for the city.
According to the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation, 376,000 drivers have their license suspended for failure to pay or respond. The state legislature is considering amnesty, along with a community service option, to help motorists escape the escalating cycle of fines and fees.
A decision by Los Angeles County to eliminate court administrative fees could soon be followed by a statewide measure. State Senator Holly Mitchell, author of a new bill to slash the fees, said they are a “self-defeating, anemic source of revenue.”
For years, Boyle County in Kentucky’s bluegrass region has taken 50 percent off money paid to inmates by their families as a way to fund jail operations. But recently, authorities decided that the fee didn’t “further any legitimate goal of the criminal justice system.”