Yes, Government Law Enforcement Keeps Screwing the Poor

Jesse Walker wisely wrote here the other day that “A
Serious Anti-Poverty Agenda Has to Include Criminal Justice
Reform.” I reported in January on various instances in which
the enforcement of petty laws involving the way we move ourselves
and our vehicles through the world—and where we deposit them—can
ruin the less-well-offs lives for very little good reason in my
article “Petty
Law Enforcement vs. the Poor.”

One thing I learned in my research for that article from
academics and workers in the field of poverty aid was that there
was very little accumulated sociological knowledge about the true
extent of this problem. Last week, the sometimes-good folk at NPR
did an
interestingly thorough journalistic look at one aspect of this
whole issue: court costs.

While not revealing all the facts with social science precision,
helps remind anyone who cares that if the government wants to make
the lives of the poor less harsh, it can profitably check itself
and do some things differently.

It relates sad anecdotes about how very minor infractions can
lead to jail time if you don’t pay the fines you were first hit
with. And it stressed how in most states the government—despite all
those taxes we pay—basically wants each offender to cover the costs
of their own prosecution, including public defenders,
incarcaration, parole supervison, even sometimes jury trials.

The nub of the problem:

The people most likely to face arrest and go through the courts
are poor, says sociologist Alexes Harris, at the University of
Washington. She’s writing a book on these fees and the people who
struggle to pay them.

“They tend to be people of color, African-Americans and
Latinos,” Harris says. “They tend to be high school dropouts, they
tend to be people with mental illness, with substance abuse. So
these are already very poor and marginalized people in our society,
and then we impose these fiscal penalties to them and expect that
they make regular payments, when in fact the vast majority are
unable to do so.”

Many fees can be waived for indigent defendants, but judges are
more likely to put the poor on a more manageable payment plan.

Courts, however, will then sometimes tack on extra fees,
penalties for missed payments and may even charge interest.

In Washington state, for example, there’s 12 percent interest on
costs in felony cases that accrues from the moment of judgment
until all fines, fees, restitution and interest are paid off in
full. As a result, it can be hard for someone who’s poor to make
that debt ever go away. One state commission found that the average
amount in felony cases adds up to $2,500. If someone paid a typical
amount — $10 a month — and never missed a payment, his debt would
keep growing. After four years of faithful payments, the person
would now owe $3,000.

Once you get trapped, often for the stupidest reasons, in this
roundrobin of fines and rights and privileges being taken away with
the failure to promptly pay them,

“There are a lot of things you can’t do. A lot of jobs you can’t
apply for,” says Todd Clear, who studies crime policy and is
provost of Rutgers University, Newark. “Lots of benefits you can’t
apply for. If you have a license, a driver’s license that needs to
be renewed, you can’t renew it. So what it means is you live your
entire life under a cloud. In a very real sense, they drop out of
the real society.”

In one county, NPR found “about a quarter of the people who were
in jail for misdemeanor offenses were there because they had failed
to pay their court fines and fees.”

Some macro-data on the problem:

The number of Americans with unpaid fines and fees is massive.
In 2011, in Philadelphia alone, courts sent bills on unpaid debts
dating back to the 1970s to more than 320,000 people — roughly 1 in
5 city residents. The median debt was around $4,500. And in New
York City, there are 1.2 million outstanding warrants, many for
unpaid court fines and fees.

The growth in the number of people who owe court-imposed
monetary sanctions shows up in surveys by the U.S. Department of
Justice, too: In 1991, 25 percent of prison inmates said they owed
court-imposed costs, restitution, fines and fees. By 2004, the last
time the Justice Department did the survey, that number climbed to
about 66 percent.

Many of these are not statutory punishments for the
crime but just fees charged as a matter of court and city and
county government policy–because they think they need the money.
It can be a substantial cash cow for them.

It again reminded me of my last day in court, for a traffic
offense. (I was guilty as hell!) Every single other person
there—every one!—was in court facing fines over a thousand and
possible jail time over things that started with “minor” fines in
the less than a hundred to few hundred level—fines that because of
their wealth level they were unwilling, or because of lack of
general shit-togetherness didn’t manage, to pay on time. It’s a
crummy situation.