WASHINGTON — An incessant wave of protests has hit the country since the death of Mike Brown last August in Ferguson, Missouri, and a growing movement of activists are organizing around issues related to the criminal justice system. Yet there’s perhaps little attention being paid to another major injustice hitting the people trapped in that system: “pay-to-stay” fees and other monetary sanctions accrued during incarceration.
“[A]n estimated 10 million people owe more than $50 billion in debt resulting from their involvement in the criminal justice system,” according to Lauren-Brooke Eisen, senior counsel in the Justice Program at the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law, a nonpartisan law and policy institute that seeks to improve systems of democracy and justice.
In May, Eisen published “Charging Inmates Perpetuates Mass Incarceration,” a policy white paper explaining how America’s criminal justice system “is replete with fees to that attempt to shift costs from the government to those accused and convicted of breaking the law.” She explained to MintPress News that skyrocketing costs in the criminal justice system are compounded by a prison population which has doubled since the early 1990s.
“In 1982, policing, jails, prisons and courts cost $35 billion, and in 2012 they cost about $265 billion,” Eisen said.
The money to fund the system has to come from somewhere. With government budgets already stressed, Eisen said, “We’re seeing an increasing amount of that funding is coming from the defendants.”
Fees for getting arrested, fees for staying in prison, fees for everything!
“Unlike fines, whose purpose is to punish, and restitution, which is intended to compensate victims of crimes for their loss, user fees are intended to raise revenue,” she wrote in the white paper.
An Illinois court ruled in 2012 that a Johnnie Melton, a 50-year-old inmate from Chicago, must pay the state $19,925.89 after he obtained a legal settlement from his mother’s death. He accrued the debt while he was incarcerated at the Logan Correctional Center in Illinois from Oct. 28, 2011 to Jan. 8, 2013. In February 2013, state officials filed a suit against Melton, asserting they had a right to be reimbursed for his “care, custody, treatment, or rehabilitation” during his incarceration period.
And this certainly isn’t an isolated incident, Eisen told MintPress.
“Once someone is arrested, they are then subject to a whole host of criminal justice fees,” she said.
The charges are tallied from a person’s arrest to their reentry back into society, including everything from booking to postage costs, to transportation, to room and board. If the party in question is indigent or unable to pay for some reason, those fees will be wracked up as debt to be paid at a later time.
A Brennan Center report from 2010 explains how these prisoner fees can far exceed the fines attached to the crime itself:
“According to one recent docket sheet… a Pennsylvania woman convicted of a drug crime incurred 26 different fees, ranging from $2 to $345. When her financial obligations are added together, she faces $2,464 in fees alone, an amount that is approximately three times larger than both her fine ($500) and restitution ($325) combined.”
Eisen told MintPress that applications for a public defender often include a fee, even though the 6th Amendment of the Bill of Rights – the right to a speedy and public trial – requires the government to provide free legal counsel to poor defendants.
Florida offers a good example of how this works, she says, explaining:
“If you’re arrested for a misdemeanor, you can be charged $50 just for your application fee [for a public defender], and if it’s a felony, $100. This kind of begs the question of how that’s possible because you qualified for a public defender.”
Ferguson and the 14th Amendment
Indeed, fees associated with the criminal justice system are endemic and predatory. The Brennan Center analyzed data from all 50 states and found that as of 2015, “at least 43 states authorize room and board fees and at least 35 states authorize medical fees to be charged to inmates in either state or county correctional facilities.”
The Department of Justice reported in March that the political leadership of the city of Ferguson encouraged revenue generation through court and other types of fees, imposed on victims of the criminal justice system.
The Ferguson report states: “Ferguson police officers from all ranks told us that revenue generation is stressed heavily within the police department, and that the message comes from City leadership. The evidence we reviewed supports this perception.”
The report, which is considered to be indicative of police departments across the country, states that the municipal court system in the city operates in violation of the 14th Amendment, the right to due process and equal protection.
“The municipal court does not act as a neutral arbiter of the law or a check on unlawful police conduct. Instead, the court primarily uses its judicial authority as the means to compel the payment of fines and fees that advance the City’s financial interests,” states the report.
An American institution
Eisen traced the origins of criminal justice fees back to 1846, when Michigan began to charge offenders for medical care. “I think it’s something that’s been happening in plain sight for a long time,” she said, adding that the Brennan Center’s report is the most up-to-date legislative survey of these types of fees.
The center attributes the exponential growth of mass incarceration to political forces opposed to change associated with the civil rights movement. Eisen wrote:
“Mass incarceration was a distinct response by policymakers to both the social turmoil of the 1960s — a troubling era for many Americans because of protests, riots, and acts of civil disobedience related to both the civil rights movement and the Vietnam War — and the increasing crime rate of the 1970s and 1980s.”
The types of policies that enforced opposition to this growing political movement and heightened awareness among citizens included mandatory minimum sentences, like “three strikes you’re out” laws, prison construction, the elimination of parole, and truth-in-sentencing, according to the report.
A self-perpetuating cycle
As to what people can do to fight back against a system that increasingly extrapolates fees from individuals made victim of the criminal justice system, Eisen said people need to put pressure on their congressional representatives.
She added that the ACLU files litigation for some of these cases, and the Brennan Center has offered as a solution that state policymakers could provide caps on criminal justice fees.
Dishearteningly, Eisen noted:
“What is often seen as the most egregious aspect of this is that you can be hauled into court for a warrant for either failing to meet the conditions of your supervision because you have this debt, or just failing to pay these fees and fines.”
She explained that in some jurisdictions, defendants will often choose to spend a few days in jail to help pay off their debt. “Some jurisdictions will actually allow you to get credit for your debt for time spent in jail,” she said.
“And in some jurisdictions they’re just hauled back into prison because they haven’t paid these fees,” she concluded.