From the Editor - Prison Legal News

Cost Shifting (cont.)
charged with a felony in the United State
are indigent” based on Department of
Justice data collected in 2000. 26 Saddling
those least able to pay with an extra cost
– beyond that assessed in general taxes
– for running a justice system ostensibly
designed to serve the public is both
inequitable and unlikely to generate the
desired revenues. Predictably, researchers
have found that “[s]taggering amounts
of economic sanctions are unpaid, more
than $4.5 billion in fines at the federal
level and more than $166 million in New
Jersey alone.” 27
The current approach of levying costs
has a particularly devastating effect on
populations of color, communities disproportionately
represented in the criminal
justice system. At the end of 2005, 60
percent of state and federal prisoners were
African-American or Latino. 28 African-
American women were more than twice as
likely as Latina females and over 3 times
more likely than white females to have
been in prison on December 31, 2005. 29
The Census Bureau’s most recent income
and poverty figures show that African-
American households had the lowest
median income in 2005 ($30,858), 61 percent
of the median for non-Latino white
households ($50,784). 30 Median income
for Latino households was 71 percent of
the median for non-Latino, white households.
31 In 2005, the poverty 32 rate was 24.9
percent for African-Americans, with 9.2
million people in poverty, and 21.8 percent
of Latinos, with 9.4 million in poverty. 33
For non-Latino whites, the poverty rate
was 8.3 percent, or 16.2 million people in
2005. 34 These prison and economic demographics
show that communities of color
are both disproportionately incarcerated
EXECUTIVE CLEMENCY
April 2008
For Info on Sentence Reduction through
Executive Clemency:
NATIONAL CLEMENCY PROJECT
8624 CAMP COLUMBUS ROAD
HIXSON, TENNESSEE, 37343
(423) 843-2235
(33-Years of Clemency & Parole Assistance)
and disproportionately impoverished.
Legislators often create new fees
and increase existing assessments without
much, if any, information about the
system-imposed debts criminal defendants
already face, or how those debts
affect people’s lives. In 2003 alone about
a third of the states enacted laws assessing
costs against criminal defendants for
court security, probation supervision,
appointed counsel, transfer of parole or
probation supervision to another state,
inmate medical and dental expenses, sex
offender registration, electronic monitoring
fees, and costs of incarceration, like
room and board. In addition to enacting
new fees some states increased existing
assessments. 35 Illinois doubled its monthly
probation fee (to $50), 36 Kansas doubled
its assigned counsel application fee (to
$100), 37 (which all defendants seeking a
court appointed lawyer to represent them
at trial must complete). Minnesota upped
its assigned counsel fee from $25 to $200, 38
and Oklahoma quadrupled its monthly
electronic monitoring fee to $300. 39
George Keiser, Chief of the Community
Corrections/Prison Division at
the National Institute of Corrections, has
studied the issue for decades. “Legislation
imposing financial obligations has typically
been passed incrementally,” Keiser
observes, creating “a danger in tacking
fees upon fees with no end in sight.”
He suggests reviewing “the mandates in
place before introducing new financial
penalties.” 40
With the growth of the adult correctional
population – over seven million
adults are in jail, prison, or supervised
in their community 41 -- in the near term
policymakers will continue to feel pressure
to balance large, costly criminal justice
system budgets. The temptation to shift
the financial burden to the most politically
powerless among us
– those caught up in
the criminal justice
4
system – is fierce.
While the move may
be popular with
taxpayers and legislators
eager to avoid
raising taxes, any
short-term gains in
revenue come at the
cost of long-term
community survival.
Even the courts and
criminal justice administrators
who are
the intended beneficiaries of cost-shifting
economic sanctions are beginning to
realize the futility of saddling those who
reenter society with debt so crippling that
any chances of successful reintegration
may be impossible.
An Overview of Criminal Financial
Assessments
“I’ve never seen so many people interested
in $15!” 42
— Probationer’s disbelief at paying
multiple fees, as expressed on the wall of
a probation office bathroom. 43
A first step in understanding whether
assessing cost-related fees is the appropriate
way to defray the skyrocketing budget
costs of state criminal justice systems is
identifying the actual fees being assessed.
An increasingly popular method for meeting
the costs of expensive criminal justice
systems is to recoup administrative costs
from those arrested, prosecuted, incarcerated
and supervised within criminal justice
systems. 44 While states usually enact legislation
authorizing assessment of fees at
each stage of the criminal justice process,
these charges resemble landmines – they
are “hidden” and “scattered throughout
every state code,” 45 and have the capacity
to destroy financially those they come in
contact with. As a result, it is difficult for
any given defendant, defense attorney, or
even policymaker to fully comprehend the
financial sanction attached to a conviction
or sentence.
The National Institute of Correction’s
first comprehensive analysis of economic
sanctions, released in 1988, provided an
overview of the types of financial consequences
levied upon arrest, conviction,
and sentence. 46 Fines, costs, and restitution,
perhaps the most familiar forms of
economic sanctions, are usually formal
penalties explicitly set forth in the court’s
Judgment and Sentence of the defendant,
like the assessments Mr. Rideau faced.
Fines are the traditional monetary penalty,
usually imposed according to severity
of crime, to punish an individual. Court
costs are fees adopted and imposed by jurisdictions
on most convicted persons, to
cover a variety of court expenses that may
include maintenance of court facilities,
service of warrants, and law enforcement
officers’ retirement funds. 47 Restitution
is a court-ordered “payment by the offender
to the victim for financial losses,
and embodies both the just deserts notion
of offense-based penalties and concern
for the victim,” 48 and may be collected at
Prison Legal News