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Date: November 22, 2024 Fri
Time: 12:13 pm
Time: 12:13 pm
Results for user fees
2 results foundAuthor: Bannon, Alicia Title: Criminal Justice Debt: A Barrier to Reentry Summary: Many states are imposing new and often onerous “user fees” on individuals with criminal convictions. Yet far from being easy money, these fees impose severe – and often hidden – costs on communities, taxpayers, and indigent people convicted of crimes. They create new paths to prison for those unable to pay their debts and make it harder to find employment and housing as well to meet child support obligations. This report examines practices in the fifteen states with the highest prison populations, which together account for more than 60 percent of all state criminal filings. We focused primarily on the proliferation of “user fees,” financial obligations imposed not for any traditional criminal justice purpose such as punishment, deterrence, or rehabilitation but rather to fund tight state budgets. Across the board, we found that states are introducing new user fees, raising the dollar amounts of existing fees, and intensifying the collection of fees and other forms of criminal justice debt such as fines and restitution. But in the rush to collect, made all the more intense by the fiscal crises in many states, no one is considering the ways in which the resulting debt can undermine reentry prospects, pave the way back to prison or jail, and result in yet more costs to the public. Details: York: Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law, 2010. 63p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed October 11, 2010 at: http://brennan.3cdn.net/c610802495d901dac3_76m6vqhpy.pdf Year: 2010 Country: United States URL: http://brennan.3cdn.net/c610802495d901dac3_76m6vqhpy.pdf Shelf Number: 119916 Keywords: PrisonersReentrySupervision FeesUser Fees |
Author: Diller, Rebekah Title: The Hidden Costs of Florida's Criminal Justice Fees Summary: Increasingly, states are turning to so-called “user fees” and surcharges to underwrite criminal justice costs and close budget gaps. In this report, we focus on Florida, a state that relies so heavily on fees to fund its courts that observers have coined a term for it – “cash register justice.” Since 1996, Florida added more than 20 new categories of financial obligations for criminal defendants and, at the same time, eliminated most exemptions for those who cannot pay. The fee increases have not been accompanied by any evident consideration of their hidden costs: the cumulative impacts on those required to pay, the ways in which the debt can lead to new offenses, and the costs to counties, clerks and courts of collection mechanisms that fail to exempt those unable to pay. This report examines the impact of the Florida Legislature’s decision to levy more user fees on persons accused and convicted of crimes, without providing exemptions for the indigent. Its conclusions are troubling. Florida relies heavily on fees to underwrite its criminal justice system and, at times, uses monies generated by fees to subsidize general revenue. In many cases, the debts are uncollectible; performance standards for court clerks, for example, expect that only 9 percent of fees levied in felony cases will be collected. Yet, aggressive collection practices result in a range of collateral consequences. Missed payments produce more fees. Unpaid costs prompt the suspension of driving privileges (and, relatedly, the ability to get to work). Moreover, collection practices are not uniform across the state. Court clerks have most of the responsibility. In some judicial circuits, the courts themselves take a more active role. At their worst, collection practices can lead to a new variation of “debtors’ prison” when individuals are arrested and incarcerated for failing to appear in court to explain missed payments. As most prisons and jails are at capacity, and unemployment and economic hardship are widespread, it is time to consider whether heaping more debt on those unable to afford it is a sensible approach to financing essential state functions. Details: New York: Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law, 2010. 42p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed October 11, 2010 at: http://www.brennancenter.org/page/-/Justice/FloridaF%26F.pdf?nocdn=1 Year: 2010 Country: United States URL: http://www.brennancenter.org/page/-/Justice/FloridaF%26F.pdf?nocdn=1 Shelf Number: 119919 Keywords: CourtsFinesSupervision FeesUser Fees |