What court fees and predatory lenders have in common

A $100 traffic ticket can lock some people into a cycle of debt.

Photo by Samuel Regan-Asante on Unsplash

Happy Finance Friday! Welcome to another “fines and fees” edition of LSS. Last week I looked at parking charges and revenue. This week, I’m writing about court fines and fees.

Do you have a suggestion for a particular municipal fine or fee you’d like me to write about? Let me know by replying to this message or click here to email me.

What courts and predatory lenders have in common

There’s lots of research out there that shows how the burden of court fees and fines falls largely on the poor—much like a regressive tax—and especially on Black and Brown people. The charges are unaffordable for many of these folks, and billions of dollars go unpaid each year, locking people into debt and reducing their civil liberties. 

• Fines, Fees, and Bail: Payments in the Criminal Justice System That Disproportionately Impact the Poor (White House, Council of Economic Advisers Issue Brief, 2015)

• Criminalizing Poverty: The Consequences of Court Fees in a Randomized Experiment (American Sociological Review, 2022)

• Debt Sentence: How Fines And Fees Hurt Working Families (Fines & Fees Justice Center, 2023)

What’s more, the fees in association with fines have rapidly become higher, easily doubling or quadrupling the final bill. In this sense, the criminal justice system is little better than predatory payday lenders who lock borrowers into a cycle of poverty.

Here’s a summary of one particularly egregious example from the U.S. Department of Justice report on Ferguson, Mo.: 

In 2007 a woman received two citations and a $151 fine, plus fees, on a single day for parking her car illegally. The woman, who was Black, had experienced financial difficulties and periods of homelessness over several years. Over the next three years, she was charged with seven Failure to Appear offenses for missing court dates and the court issued an arrest warrant and imposed new fines and fees for each new charge. From 2007 to 2014, the woman was arrested twice, spent six days in jail, and paid $550 to the court for the events stemming from this single instance of illegal parking. She twice attempted to make partial payments but the court refused to accept anything less than payment in full. As of December 2014, despite having already paid $550, she still owed $541.

Meanwhile, more charges are being levied on the defendant at every junction in the process. A Reuters story last year noted that “Fees in the criminal justice process have proliferated since the 1980s, and especially so after the 2008 recession, as localities struggled with decreased funding for vital government functions.”

According to a 2019 American Bar Association report:

• In 44 states, defendants can be billed for a public defender.

• In 41 states, inmates can be charged room and board for jail and prison stays. 

• In 44 states, offenders can get billed for their own probation and parole supervision. 

• And in 49 states (except Hawaii), defendants and offenders have to pay a fee for the electronic monitoring devices they are ordered to wear.

Criminal justice fairness advocates have long pointed out the unfair nature of excessive fines and fees. But it wasn’t until in 2014, when the Ferguson police fatally shot 18-year-old Michael Brown and triggered civil unrest and protests across the nation, that the practice started drawing considerable interest around the country. The DOJ later found that Ferguson police prioritized generating revenue from writing tickets. 

Court fines and fees are counterproductive

In a general sense, municipal fees are meant to cover the cost of services or at least a portion thereof. But that’s not the case with imposed court fees and their associated fines.