Government imposes fines as punishment for everything from traffic and municipal code violations to felonies, and charges people fees on top of the fines as a means of financing such core functions as law enforcement, the court system, and other government operations.
Routinely ordered without regard to a person’s ability to pay, the fines and fees for even a single incident can add up to thousands of dollars. People who can afford to pay can quickly close the case and move on with their lives. People unable to pay the sums, however, may face a wide range of ongoing harms, including more fees, civil judgments, driver’s license suspensions, revocation of voting rights, and even incarceration. Such inequality also has consequences for the stability and integrity of our communities and institutions, including our courts.
It shouldn’t be this way. The most direct approach to eliminating the harms of unaffordable fines and fees is to abolish fees altogether and to right-size fines. In many jurisdictions, however, such changes are far-off, as fines remain unaffordable, and fees are commonly imposed. Reformers, both within and outside of courts, have an interest in taking steps to reduce the harms of unaffordable fines and fees, including by establishing and implementing meaningful ability to pay determinations.
Constitutional and public policy imperatives support the public’s expectation that the judiciary will make ability to pay determinations before imposing fines and fees. In NCAJ’s new report, Ability to Pay: Closing the Access to Justice Gap with Policy Solutions for Unaffordable Fines and Fees, NCAJ’s Law & Policy Director, Lauren Jones, examines those imperatives, and identifies a set of 10 leading edge policies — laws and practices in use across the country — that some states are relying on to reduce the harms caused by unaffordable fines and fees.
NCAJ's new Ability to Pay Report supplements our earlier Fines and Fees Justice Index, the online resource NCAJ created in 2021 (and updated in 2022) that is a resource to all who are pursuing better policies to curb the harms caused by states and communities that rely excessively on fines and fees. In casting a bright light on 10 key policy models, NCAJ invites researchers to examine them, journalists to write about them, advocates to use them, and reformers to consider replicating them..
We invite you to check out the Ability to Pay Report (including these highlights from the Report) and also check out NCAJ's Fines and Fees Justice Index. We welcome all questions and we would be happy to talk with you about how you can use the findings to increase access to justice in your community. We would also love to hear from you about the ability to pay procedures in your state. Reach us here, ncaj@fordham.edu. Visit us at NCAJ.org.