Fines, jail, probation, debt: Court policies punish the poor
LIBERTY, Tenn. — Johnny Gibbs has been trying to get a valid driver’s license for 20 years, but he just can’t afford it.
To punish him for high school truancy in 1999, Tennessee officials told him he would not be able to legally drive until he turned 21. He drove anyway, incurring two tickets and racking up more than $1,000 in fines and fees.
Like other lowincome defendants in similar situations across the country, Gibbs couldn’t pay and ended up serving jail time and probation. That incurred another cost: a monthly supervision fee to a private probation company.
Rather than risk another arrest, Gibbs, now 38, decided to quit driving, which he said makes it nearly impossible to work. He said he spent several years living in a motel room with his mother, his disabled father and his sister before they all became homeless. In August, the family found housing in a dilapidated trailer, miles from the nearest town or food source.
“Honestly, I feel like I’m being punished for being poor,” Gibbs said.
For years, state and city officials in the U.S. — unwilling to raise taxes — have steadily increased their reliance on court fines and fees to balance budgets. Poor defendants who can’t pay are jailed, clogging local lockups with people who in many cases have not been convicted of any crime and putting others on a probation that doesn’t end until all debts are erased.
A growing number of legal groups and nonprofit organizations throughout the U.S. are challenging these practices, but they continue — despite a 1983 U.S. Supreme Court decision that found it unconstitutional to incarcerate defendants too poor to pay fines.
In Oklahoma, for example, the Washingtonbased Civil Rights Corps, which has litigated more than 20 lawsuits since it was founded in 2016 to undo various aspects of “userfunded justice,” is challenging policies that it claims have led to one of the highest incarceration rates in the world.
Counties across the state of Oklahoma refer debt collection to a forprofit company, Aberdeen Enterprizes II, which adds an additional 30 percent fee and threatens debtors with arrest. Many of those who can’t pay are not just thrown in jail; they’re also made to pay for their incarceration, further increasing their debt.
Tennessee Supreme Court Justice Jeffrey Bivens said reforming fees, fines and bail is a priority of the Conference of Chief Justices, a nonprofit organization comprising top judicial officials from each of the 50 states.
“We’re having situations where even with $500 or $1,000 bail, these folks can’t make that bail,” Bivens said. “Then they lose their jobs … their families, their children. … It’s a neverending and increasing cycle.”
Just last year, a national task force of state court administrators and chief justices released a list of principles stating that courts should be funded entirely by governments and should not be used as “a revenuegenerating arm.”
The nonprofit Vera Institute of Justice New Orleans is trying to make the Big Easy the first city in the country to eliminate both money bail and conviction fines and fees. The group’s data shows the city could dip into its own coffers for the $2.8 million the local criminal court, district attorney and public defender now get from the fines and fees — and still come out nearly $3 million ahead. That’s because the city is spending about $5.4 million a year to lock people up when they can’t pay, said Jon Wool, the institute’s director of justice policy.