How Do You Solve a Problem Like Fees and Fines?

Wisely evaluating arrest-, prosecution- and incarceration-related fines and fees, which are assessed in nearly every traffic and criminal case where the defendant is found guilty — and even in some cases where they are not — is a kaleidoscopic endeavor. This is partly a criminal justice question: Fines are meant as punishment, and fees are framed as the cost of “using” the system. But since they cumulatively result in revenue that’s used in much the same way tax dollars are, fines and fees can also be fairly viewed as a public finance matter. 

Until about 10 years ago, fines and fees were rarely studied. But in the decade since a U.S. Department of Justice investigation of the Ferguson, Missouri Police Department surfaced grave questions about the fairness and constitutionality of fines and fees practices in that city, researchers have developed a body of evidence demonstrating that fines and fees are a pain point in jurisdictions across the country. Far from being a minor nuisance, fines and fees can add up quickly, hanging over low-income Americans like a dark cloud for years after they have left the justice system.

Now the question is how to responsibly go about reforming a system that implicates both municipal finance and public safety, two notoriously ticklish areas of public administration. Recent findings from a mixed-methods research collaboration out of Jefferson County, Ala., suggest that it is possible to improve compliance, accountability and efficiency without compromising the fair administration of justice.

In a 2024 special issue of Vital City devoted to the question, “Does Evidence Matter?” editors Elizabeth Glazer and Greg Berman wrote, “The relationship between academic research and the ‘real world’ of government work is a vexed one.”

It doesn’t have to be. Fees and fines are a great example of a realm where academic studies and public policy reform have been working in carefully coordinated tandem. 

Consider the case of Jefferson County, whose county seat of Birmingham has historically played host to many courageous confrontations with unjust laws and administrative systems. Starting in the fall of 2021, sitting judges and other practitioners in the jurisdiction worked with a multidisciplinary group of researchers, including the three of us, to examine how fines and fees assessed at sentencing in criminal cases play out — and to devise practical, effective ways to improve the assessment and collections process. Less than two years later, this collaborative produced a pilot intervention designed to mitigate the harm of fines and fees on individuals without sacrificing revenue. Findings from this project suggest it’s possible that a relatively simple intervention can reduce debt burden, improve compliance and even increase revenue.

The story of this project begins in 2018, when Alabama Appleseed, a public policy organization, surveyed 980 Alabama residents who owed debt from fines and fees that they couldn’t pay off immediately and from which they were experiencing severe consequences. These consequences included job loss, suspended drivers’ licenses and incarceration. Almost 40% of survey participants reported committing an additional crime — most commonly, selling drugs, stealing or engaging in sex work — to get the money needed to pay their fines and fees. Negative consequences were not confined to the individuals who owed the debt. Most debtors borrowed money to pay what they owed, usually from their family networks. 

Judges in Birmingham’s 10th Circuit Criminal Court, which has jurisdiction over most felony and misdemeanor cases in Jefferson County, were unsettled by these findings. They wanted to know more about the scope of the issue, the consequences for those who owe debt, and what happened to the revenue that was collected via fines and fees. To that end, they obtained data from more than 20,000 Jefferson County cases from between 2015-2019 in which people were assessed fines and fees at sentencing and partnered with us to assess the findings.

From a justice perspective, the picture we painted for judges and court practitioners was grim. Due to a 30% collections fee levied on debt in arrears for 90 days, most people, including those making regular payments, saw their balances increase over time. After controlling for a host of related factors, researchers found that Black people had 57% higher cumulative balances when compared to white people, while those judged indigent by the court had 48% higher cumulative balances than those who were not. Moreover, we found fines and fees debt was highly concentrated in low-income, and primarily Black, census tracts. 

The picture on the public finance side was no brighter. Most people didn’t pay anything, and, on average, the court collected 30% of the total assessed. That collection rate is low when compared to other sources of public revenue. Local governments receive more than 90% of the property taxes they levy, and even the federal government brings in about 85% of the income taxes Americans owe. These collection rates are higher because governments have whole departments dedicated to assessment and collection, and they invest resources to increase compliance. Public finance researchers, too, have dedicated significant time and effort to understanding how to optimize tax collection. 

Mapping the system as a whole and watching how the money flowed — or did not flow — contextualized what practitioners were seeing daily and assigned numbers to problems that were typically viewed through an anecdotal lens. For example, most judges knew that legal financial obligations went unpaid, but worried that not assessing fees would create a budget crisis for the courts. 

The data helped them understand that the court maintained an outstanding assessment amount of about $10 million, and that even if they improved collections, there would still be questions to ask and answer about how the money was distributed. For instance, unless judges manually override it via order, a priority system built into Alabama’s docketing software determines where money paid toward fines and fees is disbursed. When debtors pay, that revenue flows to the first prosecutor’s office and clerk. If those accounts are satisfied in full — a relatively rare occurrence — the remaining money flows to an array of additional funds. Near the bottom of the list is a state fund earmarked to compensate victims of violence.

Our findings showed that people who owed less money generally paid more (not just a larger proportion, but more actual dollars), and people who finished paying were most likely to pay on or close to the same day debt was assessed. This suggested that less debt paired with greater immediacy might be a smart way forward, if there was a way to get there within the legal and ethical constraints of the criminal justice system. 

Faced with this information, the judges asked the research team to help devise a better approach to assessing and collecting fines and fees. After a day of intense conversation, the contours of a novel approach that would tackle excessive debt, poor collections and lack of compliance emerged. 

The idea was straightforward. Alabama judges have broad discretion to reduce fines and fees for defendants who lack the ability to pay. Judges would leverage this rule with respect to the most common felonies in Jefferson County — simple drug possession and theft — and offer indigent defendants the option of paying $100 on the day of sentencing in exchange for having the rest of their debt from fines and fees forgiven. Restitution, if any was owed, would not be included in the deal. 

If it worked, the pilot would increase compliance, generate at least the same amount of revenue on these case types, and be less likely to leave defendants saddled with debt.

Implementation was a challenge because courts are not, and never will be, laboratories. Judges must still make individual determinations on a case-by-case basis and cannot set aside their discretion unless required to by law. Meanwhile, docketing software built in 1992 is not equipped to handle novel orders. Still, after nine months and 40 participants, including 15 people who accepted the terms of the pilot and 25 who were offered and rejected it, the results are promising. Of the 15 people who accepted, 13 paid, and average revenue per treatment case was $25 more than revenue on non-treatment cases. 

The Jefferson County Circuit Court now has some limited proof of concept: At least on a small scale, it is possible to incentivize compliance and improve revenue by reducing overall assessments in exchange for timely payment. 

The pilot wasn’t perfect. The sample size was small. It’s perplexing that some people who were offered to participate declined. Perhaps that’s because the intervention wasn’t attractive to many of the  people who are detained up to the day of sentencing, who would surely struggle to gather $100 — or any money at all — in a timely fashion. Nor did the project design account for differences in criminal history, even though it’s reasonable to imagine that people facing their first felony convictions might be more able or more inclined to accept the $100 deal than those with multiple felony convictions and commensurate outstanding debt. 

Then again, high-quality science often starts with a study of anatomy, to develop a detailed understanding of a complex system through descriptive and exploratory analysis. After that, perhaps, it progresses to a fruit fly lab, where small changes in a relatively simple system signal whether an intervention should be iterated on or abandoned. In this imperfect analogy, the $100 pilot could be looked at as the fruit fly lab phase of understanding how interventions affect outcomes. It’s not scalable precisely as designed, but it gives us a sense of what’s possible and provides valuable information about where obstacles exist so that future iterations will be more effective.

Evidence matters. But the kind of evidence and how that evidence is created also matters. To deliver pragmatic models with the ability to improve complicated processes, researchers must be flexible in thinking about how they fit into participatory public policy work. That means mapping systems that are inadequately understood, even by those who run and use them; building shared knowledge with practitioners; and jointly developing and testing hypotheses before attempting to scale interventions that can lead to more rigorous causal research. In sum, Glazer and Berman are right: Ethical, structural, cultural and administrative differences can indeed “vex” the relationship between academia and “real-world” government. But with creativity and a collaborative spirit, they can also yield promising evidence — and better outcomes.