Page 49 - Impact: Collected Essays on the Threat of Economic Inequality

majority of over $50 billion spent on corrections by the states alone .9 This penal entrenchment has pushed legislatures to devise ways to make criminals help foot the bill,10 with LFOs representing a modern iteration of state and local fundraising . Despite these efforts, total fee collections thus far have been modest, and in worst-case scenarios, it is uncertain whether there is any contribution at all to criminal justice budgets due to the unaccounted costs involved in administering LFOs .11 Despite such gaps in knowledge, states have growingly turned to imposing such penalties against criminal offenders .
States Increasingly Imposing LFOs
Although research on the subject is sparse,12 imposing financial obligations upon criminals is a growing trend .13 These sanctions may include fees, fines, restitution orders, and other legal obligations imposed by the courts and other criminal justice agencies .14 Other penalties may include fees for supervision, program participation, electronic monitoring services, jail/prison costs, and health care, and other fees levied in addition to any civil penalties and child support obligations .
Fines are nothing new in terms of punishment, although they have been imposed more in some eras than others .15 The Eighth Amendment of the U .S . Constitution forbids “excessive fines,” yet the Supreme Court has not created a robust jurisprudence in the area, ruling only once that a forfeiture violated the Constitution .16
Today, the various fees are numerous . In some states, judges may impose nearly twenty fees and fines on felony defendants at the time of sentencing .17 In addition, criminal justice agencies,
9 naT’l ass’n of sTaTe BudgeT officers, sTaTe spending for correcTions: long-Term Trends and recenT criminal JusTice policy reforms 1-2, available at https://www.nasbo.org/sites/default/files/pdf/State%20Spending%20for%20 Corrections.pdf.
10 See, e.g., alicia Bannon eT al., Brennan cTr. for JusTice, criminal JusTice deBT: a Barrier To reenTry 4, (2010), available at http://csgjusticecenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/2010-Brennan-Center-CJ-Debt-Barrier-to-Reentry.pdf (describing how “[c]ash-strapped states have increasingly turned to user fees to fund their criminal justice systems, as well as to provide general budgetary support.”); see also Katherine Beckett & Alexes Harris, On Cash and Conviction: Monetary Sanctions as Misguided Policy, 10 criminology & puBl. pol’y 505 (2011).
11 See, e.g., Bannon eT al., supra note 10, at 10 (describing a fifteen-state study in which “none of the fifteen states studied had any kind of process for measuring the impact of criminal justice debt and related collection practices on former offenders, their families, or their communities. And even though fees are imposed as a revenue-generating measure, none of the fifteen had a statewide process for tracking the costs of collection.”).
12 See Harris et al., supra note 2, at 1753 (“little is known about the frequency with which monetary sanctions are actually imposed across the United States).
13 Id. at 1755-56 (finding that “monetary sanctions are now imposed by the courts on a substantial majority of the millions of U.S. convicted of felony and misdemeanor crimes each year”); see also Ethan Bronner, Poor Land in Jail as Companies Add Huge Fees for Probation, n.y. Times, July 2, 2012, http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/03/us/ probation-fees-multiply-as-companies-profit.html?smid=pl-share&_r=0.
14 See Harris et al., supra note 2, at 1756. For a recent compilation of LFO studies, see Legal Financial Obligations (LFOs), council of sTaTe governmenTs JusTice cenTer, http://csgjusticecenter.org/courts/legal-financial-obligations/.
15 See Harris et al., supra note 2, at 1758.
16 United States v. Bajakajian, 524 U.S. 321, 324 (1998); for a brief survey of Court jurisprudence, see also Steven Toscher & Barbara Lubin, When Penalties Are Excessive-The Excessive Fines Clause as a Limitation on the Imposition of the Willful FBAR Penalty, J. Tax prac. & proc. 69, 69 (2010), available at http://www.taxlitigator.com/ main/images/stories/Articles/FBAR_Penalty.pdf.
17 See e.g., Travis Stearns, Legal Financial Obligations: Fulfilling the Promise of Gideon by Reducing the Burden, 11 seaTTle J. for soc. JusTice 963, 964 note 5 (2013).
Criminal Justice Reform
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