Lauren Jones is the legal and policy director at the National Center for Access to Justice at Fordham School of Law.
Every year, across the United States, an estimated 17 million families with children have to go without food, housing, health care or other essentials because a parent owes fines and fees that they cannot afford to pay. Fines are money the government charges as punishment for traffic and municipal code violations up to felonies. Fees are taxes added on top of fines, with the sole purpose of funding law enforcement, the courts and other basic government functions — essential services that should not rely on payment from those least able to afford to pay. Together, fines and fees can add up to hundreds or even thousands of dollars for a single incident.
For people who can afford to pay, fines and fees may be a slap on the wrist. But for people with more limited means, those same fines and fees can lead to years or even a lifetime of cycling debt and poverty. People may face additional fees, ruined credit that makes it hard to rent homes or buy cars and even jail time. And they can leave families — and, by extension, communities — struggling.
A bill pending now in Delaware, which has already successfully passed in the House of Representatives, would go a long way toward fixing the problem. It would give judges the authority to waive or reduce fines and fees based on a person’s ability to pay. The bill says that judges should waive fines and fees if a person has a financial hardship, which includes if they are on public benefits like food stamps or Social Security, or were represented by a public defender. This makes sense because people who are on public benefits, by definition, do not have enough money to cover their basic living expenses, and people represented by a public defender are indigent.
If Delaware passes the bill, it would join a growing trend across the country of states that now authorize judges to take people’s ability to pay into account when imposing fines and fees. States that have made such moves in recent years span the political spectrum, geography and size. They include Texas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Montana, Rhode Island and Illinois.
Some worry that allowing judges to waive or reduce fines and fees according to ability to pay will hurt the state’s budget. But trying to extract payments from people who have no money is like trying to get blood from a stone. For that reason, fines and fees are an incredibly inefficient, unreliable way to collect revenue. One study found that places spend 41 cents of every dollar of revenue they raise from fines and fees on collection efforts. That same study found that some jurisdictions actually spend more on collection than they bring in from fines and fees. By contrast, the IRS spends 29 cents for every hundred dollars it collects in taxes.
Other states have found that, when judges reduce fines and fees to an amount that people can afford to pay, collections actually increase. In California, for example, where people charged with traffic tickets can apply online for a reduction or waiver if they are unable to afford to pay, studies have found that, when the total amounts are reduced, people are much more likely to pay.
Further, charging people unaffordable fines and fees not only undermines the idea of equal justice under the law, but it may also make the community less safe. Research has found that places that focus more on fines and fees collection, plus derive a greater portion of their budget from them, tend to solve violent crimes at lower rates. That’s because police and court attention get diverted away from preventing and reducing crime to trying to collect money.
Justice should never depend on the amount of money a person has or can pay. Authorizing judges to waive or reduce fines and fees according to people’s ability to pay would go a long way toward creating a fairer legal system. And it would bring Delaware in line with other states that have realized that setting fines and fees according to ability to pay is good not only for individuals but for families and the larger community, as well.
Reader reactions, pro or con, are welcomed at civiltalk@iniusa.org.
