Governments impose fines as punishment for everything from traffic and municipal code violations to felonies, and impose fees on top of the fines as a means of financing government functions, including law enforcement and the court system.

Routinely ordered without regard to a person’s ability to pay, the fines and fees can add up to thousands of dollars. People able to pay can close their cases quickly and move on with their lives. However, people unable to pay face a wide range of harms, including more fees, civil judgments, driver’s license suspensions, revocation of voting rights, and even incarceration. 

It shouldn’t be this way. The most direct approach to eliminating the harms of unaffordable fines and fees is to right-size the fines and abolish fees altogether. In many jurisdictions, however, such changes are far-off, as fines remain unaffordable and fees are common. Meaningful ability to pay determinations can reduce these harms and create greater equity.

In Ability to Pay: Closing the Access to Justice Gap with Policy Solutions for Unaffordable Fines and Fees, NCAJ’s Law & Policy Director, Lauren Jones, describes 10 leading edge "ability to pay policies" that communities across the country are using as part of efforts to reduce the harms caused by unaffordable fines and fees. In a separate article, just published in Fordham's Urban Law Journal, Lauren provides additional perspective on these policies.

The new report and article encourage scholars to carry out research on the policies; judges and advocates to use them in their work; reformers to consider replicating them; and, journalists to write about them. These new writings supplement NCAJ's Fines and Fees Justice Index, the data-intensive website NCAJ created in 2021 (and updated in 2022) that is a comprehensive resource for all who are pursuing better policies in the states to curb harms caused by fines and fees.