Booking fees do not pass constitutional muster
If you’re arrested in Ramsey County, Minn., you pay a fee for, well, getting arrested. Guilty or innocent, the county, which includes St. Paul and other cities and towns, confiscates a $25 “booking fee.”
Of all the outrageous charges local governments have piled on people who get tangled up in the criminal justice system, it is hardly the most troubling. But Ramsey County is part of a growing trend across the country in which local police and court systems squeeze money often from their poorest residents when they get enmeshed in the law enforcement system. Call it “policing for profit.”
Ramsey County’s booking fee is seized under a Minnesota law from people who are presumed innocent. If you’re acquitted, or the charges are dismissed, or you’re never even charged, it’s not automatically returned. You have to seek a refund in a process that lawyers for some arrestees call burdensome and confusing.
The obstacles discouraged Corey Statham, who was charged with disorderly conduct, released in 48 hours and whose charges were dismissed. He never got the fee back. In America, you’re not supposed to be punished without being convicted.
But how much of a punishment is losing $25? As a federal judge noted about a similar fee in Woodridge, Ill., that’s about half a day’s pay for someone earning the federal minimum wage.
That’s what lawyers for Statham and other arrestees have argued in a federal lawsuit. After losing in the lower courts, they’ve asked the Supreme Court to hear them out. The court ought to take the case, something it could do as early as this month.
Such practices clearly do plenty of harm. Just look at a few:
In California, a $100 traffic ticket becomes $490 with additional charges, including fees for court construction, a DNA fund and emergency medical services. Missing the deadline bumps the fine to $815. Millions of drivers, some too poor to come up with $490, have lost their licenses and the ability to get to work.
In Ferguson, Mo., a 2015 Justice Department investigation found the city using police to generate income. Fines for minor offenses ballooned into “crippling debt.” When an individual missed a court date or failed to pay, jail was often the penalty. Under a consent decree, some practices have changed, but in cities nearby, fines remain a profit center.
In Colorado, in a case to be argued before the Supreme Court on Monday, the law makes it nearly impossible for defendants whose convictions are overturned to retrieve fines and restitution they paid when they were falsely convicted. To get a refund, they must file a separate civil lawsuit and prove their innocence.
Ramsey’s booking fee takes unfair advantage of arrestees, who must navigate a difficult system to get the money back. In some circumstances, they must get a letter from the police agency that arrested them, on official letterhead, stating the agency “did not and will not formally charge them.” Court records show the county has rejected applications or paid a partial refund with little or no explanation.
Nationwide, the system will change only when governments start looking at people who are ticketed or arrested as citizens with rights, instead of easily milked cash cows.