The Real Cost of Prisons Weblog

In 1970, the Supreme Court ruled that it violates equal protection to keep inmates in prison extra time because they are too poor to pay a fine or court costs. More recently, the court ruled that a state generally cannot revoke a defendant’s probation and imprison him for failing to pay a fine if he is unable to do so.

That has not stopped the practice. In Georgia, poor people who cannot pay off fines — plus a monthly fee to the private company that collects the payments — are often sent to jail for nonpayment, according to Stephen Bright, president of the Southern Center for Human Rights. In 2006, the center sued on behalf of a woman who was locked up in Atlanta for eight months past her original sentence because she could not pay a $705 fine.

Until a few years ago, the police in Gulfport, Miss., regularly did sweeps of the city’s predominantly African-American neighborhoods, identified people with unpaid fines, and put them in jail. Defendants who could not pay were forced to remain there until they “sat off” their fines. The city ended the practice after it was sued.

Prisoners’ rights advocates worry that in these hard times, when government budgets are under pressure, courts and prisons will get even tougher about forcing indigent defendants to pay costs and fees, and will imprison more of them if they cannot come up with the money. The government should be helping people on society’s margins build productive lives. Throwing them in jail for being poor makes that much more difficult.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/06/opinion/06mon4.html?_r=1
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A New Push to Squeeze Defendants
By JOHN SCHWARTZ
April 6, 2009
NY Times

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — Valerie Gainous paid her debt to society, but almost went to jail because of a debt to Florida’s courts.

In 1996, she was convicted of writing bad checks; she paid restitution, performed community service and thought she was finished with the criminal justice system. Earlier this year, however, she received a letter from Collections Court telling her that she was once again facing jail time — this time, for failing to pay $240 in leftover court fees and fines, which she says she cannot afford.

Ms. Gainous has been caught up in her state’s exceptionally aggressive system to collect the court fines and fees that keep its judiciary system working. Judges themselves dun citizens who have fallen behind in their payments, but unlike other creditors, they can throw debtors in jail — and they do, by the thousands.

As Florida’s budget has tightened with the economic crisis, efforts to step up the collections process have intensified, and court clerks say the pressure is on them to bring in every dollar. “I would say there is an even more dramatic focus on those funds now,” said Beth Allman, the spokeswoman for the Florida Association of Court Clerks.

Other states are intrigued by Florida’s success, and several, including Michigan and Georgia, have also cracked down on people who owe fines. John Dew, the executive director of the Florida Clerks of Court Operations Corporation, said that when he attends national conferences about fees collection these days, states “are really looking to what we’re doing in Florida.”

With 44 states looking at budget deficits totaling $90 billion this year, 25 state court systems already have budget shortfalls, said Dan Hall, the vice president of the National Center for State Courts. Chief Justice Margaret H. Marshall of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court told the American Bar Association in a recent speech that the state courts were in crisis because of budgetary and other issues.

States facing lower revenue from income and property taxes are taking action that includes court cutbacks and fee increases. Oregon will try to save $3.1 million by closing its courthouses every Friday for four months and cutting the pay of 1,800 court workers by 20 percent. New Hampshire began suspending civil and criminal jury trials in eight counties for a month, starting last December, and postponed filling seven of the state’s 59 vacant judgeships.

Massachusetts is looking to cut its court system budget by 7.5 percent, which will almost certainly mean staff cuts. Maine is no longer staffing the metal detector checkpoints at its local courthouses. Utah is looking at imposing an $8 “conviction fee” to pay for its security and metal detectors; civil filing fees in the state will be raised as well. Florida has cut its court payroll by 10 percent, with more cuts expected.

Mr. Hall, of the courts organization, said that when states cut their judicial budgets, they “really cut deep into the fabric of our society” by causing delays of weeks or even months in resolving cases. In Iowa, for example, where the courts are trying to make up for a $3.8 million budget cut, courthouses in every county will close for eight days until June 30, and the travel budgets have been cut for judges who go from county to county to hear cases. This means delays for rural residents who have matters that have to be heard by a district judge, including divorce.

Access to efficient courts is essential to helping people resolve life’s crises — foreclosures, debt collection, divorce, child support — said Rebecca Love Kourlis, the executive director of the Institute for the Advancement of the American Legal System at the University of Denver. “You can’t put them on the back burner and say, ‘we’ll get back to you when we have more money and more staffing.’ ”

Advocates for the poor have urged other states not to follow Florida’s example of squeezing defendants harder to make up for budget cuts. Rebekah Diller, deputy director of the justice program at the Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University School of Law, said the state’s system wasted resources “to get blood from a stone.” Judges, she said, should not become “debt collectors in robes,” which she called both demeaning to the judges and humiliating for the people who must stand before them.

Rhode Island seems to agree. Faced with statistics showing that arrests for nonpayment cost far more than they bring in, the state passed a law in August granting judges latitude to waive court debts for poor defendants.

Florida, however, has continued to tighten its grip. Since 2004, the Legislature has required courts to substantially support their operating expenses through fees collected by county clerks. Some of the clerks use collection agents, while about a third use the collections courts, state officials said. Here in Leon County alone, 839 people were arrested and jailed in the year ending last September over court debts or failure to appear at collections court, according to a study by the Brennan Center. Other Florida counties have less stringent policies.

Around Leon County, there are some 5,400 outstanding “blue writs” — the civil equivalent of an arrest warrant for failing to appear and pay fees. Some people come in and pay when they receive their summons; others spend a night or more in jail, often having been arrested when the writ pops up during incidents like routine traffic stops.

In part, the numbers are high because it can be expensive to be arrested. Fines and fees for a first offense on third-degree felonies like credit card fraud or possession of cocaine are around $500, said Nancy Daniels, a Florida public defender who works in Tallahassee: $340 in court costs, a $100 prosecution fee and $50 for the public defender application fee. If the defendant cannot pay up front, starting a payment plan costs $25.

Constitutional law forbids jailing people solely over fees and fines that they cannot pay, but Florida officials argue that, technically, they are jailing people because they violated court orders, not because they failed to pay fines. Charles A. Francis, the chief judge of the state’s Second Judicial Circuit, said most judges found collections court “the most unpleasant part of the job.” The judges try not to jail people over fees, he insisted, but added, “Do you allow the orders of your court to go ignored?”

Few people are truly unable to afford monthly payments, he argued.

Shannon Russell, the supervisor of the Leon County collections department, said: “People come in and say, ‘I can’t pay this.’ My answer is, ‘you shouldn’t have gotten arrested.’ ”

Estimates for the amount collected by the county vary; the Brennan study said the program took in $18,365 from those arrested for the 12 months studied, after costs, while the county court system said the overall program brought in $768,000 last year, an amount boosted by the threat of a court process.

When Ms. Gainous appeared at a recent collections court hearing, Judge Nina Ashenafi Richardson spoke compassionately, but nonetheless pressed each of the dozens of people in the courtroom to pay what they could or face arrest.

Ms. Gainous, 39, a single mother of four, said she had been sick and could not even make a $40 down payment on her $240 in fees.

Suddenly, there was a startling moment of grace: Another woman waiting in the courtroom, Latasha Penny, volunteered to pay the $40 for her. Ms. Gainous hugged her and sobbed.

When Ms. Penny’s case came up, Judge Richardson reduced her monthly payment on $345 in fines to $30, from $45. “You did a very nice thing earlier,” Judge Richardson said with a smile.

Days later, Ms. Gainous was still incredulous, and said that she would pay the $10 a month. “It’s still hard,” she said. “But I’m going to try to get that in, to keep from going to jail for being poor.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/07/us/07collection.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all