Introduction

BACKGROUND

What issues does this guide address?

In states, counties, and cities across the country, elected officials and other policymakers are focusing unprecedented levels of attention on the growing number of people released from prisons and jails. This guide is written for these policymakers. It focuses on an aspect of prison and jail reentry that has received little attention to date: people’s failure to pay child support, restitution, and various fines, fees, and other court-imposed financial obligations after their incarceration—a source of enormous frustration to parents, victims, judges, child support enforcement officials, administrators of corrections and community corrections agencies, and social service providers.

In 2004 alone, more than 650,000 people were released from prisons in the United States, and an estimated 9 million people were released from jails.¹ Rates of failure among this population are high: approximately two out of every three people released from prisons in the United States are rearrested within three years of their release; more than 50 percent are reincarcerated.² Given the billions of dollars spent on corrections each year, and the public safety implications of so many people returning to communities from prisons and jails who are not complying with their conditions of release, policymakers’ increasing interest in reentry is not surprising.

As state and local leaders make it a priority to improve the rates of success among people released from prisons and jails, they must consider the debts that this population owes when they return to the community—and the people (in addition to the government agencies) who depend on the repayment of these debts. Approximately 1.5 million children have a parent incarcerated;³ and, when a father or mother returns to the community from prison or jail, the family is understandably eager to receive child support. For victims (and it is not unusual for a victim to also be a family member), restitution provides some reimbursement for the financial losses they have sustained, and it demonstrates that the person who committed the crime is assuming some responsibility for his or her actions. At the same time, courts and law enforcement agencies such as probation and parole departments increasingly rely on revenue-generating fees and fines.

Most people released from prisons and jails have few financial resources. It is unlikely their financial outlook will improve soon after their return to the community. On average, people released from prison are about 34 years old. Typically, 90 percent of these individuals are male, and more than half are African-American or Latino.⁴ They have little education and few marketable job skills.⁵ Generally, they return to the neighborhoods they came from or similar locales, where job opportunities are particularly limited.⁶

Given this context, the ability of people to meet their court-imposed financial obligations immediately upon their return to the community from prisons and jails is typically unrealistic. Not surprisingly, expectations among families and victims that they will be receiving payments of a particular size and frequency go unfulfilled. Competition ensues—between families and victims, and among these groups and government agencies—for some share of the monies that the person released from prison or jail owes them. This is a difficult problem for everyone involved, and it is growing more acute as the number of people released from prison and jail increases, the high rates of failure among this population persist, states pass new laws imposing new fines and fees (or increasing existing charges), and courts and community corrections agencies are told to derive a larger source of their budget from this revenue.

What will this guide help policymakers accomplish?

In this guide, legislators, administrators of corrections and community corrections agencies, court officials, victim advocates, child support enforcement officials, social service providers, and others who have an interest in the repayment of debts owed by people released from prisons and jails will find specific, practical recommendations to help them realize the following goals:

1. Learning which state, city, and county laws address court orders for child support, victim restitution, and other fines, fees, and surcharges, and understanding how these laws and policies are used to govern collections made from people released from prisons and jails.
2. Improving rates of collection of child support, restitution, and fines, fees, and surcharges from people returning to the community.
3. Helping people successfully complete the conditions of their sentence.
4. Informing lawmakers’ policy discussions and decisions when they are considering the establishment of new fines, fees, and surcharges.

HOW TO USE THIS GUIDE

How is this guide organized?

This guide provides research findings, with supporting statistics, to explain the origins and extent of the problems associated with the repayment responsibilities of people released from prisons and jails. With this foundation, the CSG Justice Center developed six policy statements, each of which articulates a principle that should guide an initiative to improve the likelihood that people released from prisons and jails will successfully meet their financial obligations to victims and families. Each policy statement is followed by a description of the problem it addresses and by a set of recommendations for implementation that are presented as lettered statements in bold text.

Numerous examples included in this guide draw attention to interesting efforts in a variety of cities, counties, and states that may provide valuable ideas for policymakers to consider or build upon as they develop their own initiatives. By highlighting certain approaches, however, this guide is not necessarily promoting them as “best practices.” The examples cited simply reflect various types of efforts that involve
partnerships, programs, or practices for other communities to think about as they develop responses to the problems detailed in this guide.

What subset of people involved in the criminal justice system does this guide address?

The policy statements in this guide address issues facing adults under correctional supervision who have been sentenced and are serving time in a correctional facility such as a prison or jail, or are under community correctional supervision (e.g., probation or parole). The policy statements here do not directly address—but may nonetheless affect—the many individuals who pass through the court system and owe substantial financial obligations but have not been sentenced to prison or jail. Considering this issue as it relates only to people released from prisons and jails and under community correctional supervision may seem arbitrary, but it does help make the scope of this document manageable, excluding issues unique to people who owe fines, fees, child support, and restitution but are not incarcerated or returning from prisons and jails to the community. It also allows an emphasis on the individuals with the fewest resources, whose failure is of the greatest cost to the state.

This guide also does not address debts that are commonly owed but not explicitly part of a sentence imposed by a criminal court, such as transportation and housing payments or consumer debt. Though not the focus of this guide, these kinds of debt are relevant to many of the policy statements and recommendations provided here.

Local governments within a state may have distinct policies and practices related to levying and collecting child support, restitution, fines, fees, and surcharges. This guide discusses state and local policies, but does not fully address the nuances that may arise on a local level.

Where does one start?

Successful implementation of the recommendations in this guide requires substantial collaboration among multiple agencies and systems. To this end, policymakers should form a working group that includes representatives of each of the systems relevant to this issue, including legislators, administrators of institutional and community corrections agencies, court officials, victim advocates, child support enforcement
officials, social service providers, and others. In addition, the working group should include representatives of those constituencies that have first-hand experience with this issue—namely, victims, family members of people who have been released from prisons and jails, and people who have themselves been incarcerated.

When convening a group with such diverse perspectives—and potentially competing interests—it is important to select as chair of the working group someone in a position of leadership and with broad authority, rather than the head of a particular agency. Judges may be uniquely suited to serve as chair because they carry with them the impartiality of the courts and typically enjoy a stature in state and local government that enables them to bring together people from different systems. Indeed, they are well positioned to moderate discussions between parties (child support advocates, probation agencies, victim advocates, and others) with different priorities and attitudes about what financial obligations should be emphasized in the collections process. Policymakers such as state legislators or county executives with responsibility for setting the budgets of multiple agencies may also appropriately be effective in this role.

The judge or elected official who leads the working group will likely not have time to coordinate the logistics of convening the group or to ensure follow-through with the group’s policy decisions. To fulfill this role, the working group should appoint a staff person whose time is dedicated to coordinating the group. The staff person should ideally have experience coordinating groups that span multiple systems and disciplines, and could conceivably come from any of the participating agencies.

With a respected chairperson and skilled support staff, the working group should begin with Policy Statement 1, which describes how to develop an understanding of the relevant laws and policies in its city, county, or state; organize this information in meaningful ways; and develop an informed plan for making improvements to the existing system based on the working group’s assessment of its laws and policies.

What resources, beyond this guide, are available?

No one document has examined in detail each of the financial obligations that people released from prisons and jails must meet. But numerous organizations have issued reports focusing on particular aspects of this issue, such as child support or victim restitution.

Users of this guide may find particularly helpful the following reports and resources:

• Working with Incarcerated and Released Parents: Lessons from OCSE Grants and State Programs, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Administration for Children and Families, Office of Child Support Enforcement.⁷
• New Directions from the Field: Victims’ Rights and Services for the 21st Century—Restitution, U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, Office for Victims of Crime.⁸
• The Role of Victims in Offender Reentry: A Community Response Manual, American Probation and Parole Association and the U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, Office for Victims of Crime.⁹
• Online Resource Library, National Center for State Courts.¹⁰

Finally, the working group should consult the dozens of resources upon which this guide relied heavily, which are listed in the Notes section.

¹ The number of people released from state prisons each year has been steadily increasing—from slightly more than 600,000 in 2000 to just under 670,000 in 2004. See Paige Harrison and Allen Beck, Prison and Jail Inmates at Midyear 2005, U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics, NCJ 213133 (Washington, D.C.: U.S.
Department of Justice, 2006). Allen J. Beck, “The Importance of Successful Reentry to Jail Population Growth,” presented at the Urban Institute Reentry Roundtable, June 27, 2006, Washington, D.C.

² The number of people released from state prisons each year has been steadily increasing—from slightly more than 600,000 in 2000 to just under 670,000 in 2004. See Paige Harrison and Allen Beck, Prison and Jail Inmates at Midyear 2005, U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics, NCJ 213133 (Washington, D.C.: U.S.
Department of Justice, 2006). Allen J. Beck, “The Importance of Successful Reentry to Jail Population Growth,” presented at the Urban Institute Reentry Roundtable, June 27, 2006, Washington, D.C.

³ Christopher Mumola, Incarcerated Parents and Their Children, U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics, NCJ 182335 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Justice, 2000).

⁴ Allen Beck, “State and Federal Prisoners Returning to the Community: Findings from the Bureau of Justice Statistics,” presented at the First Reentry Courts Initiative Cluster Meeting, April 13, 2000, Washington, D.C.

⁵ Steven Steurer, Linda Smith, and Alice Tracy, Three-State Recidivism Study (Lanham, Md.: Correctional Educational Association, 2001). C. W. Harlow, Education and Correctional Population, U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics, NCJ 195670
(Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Justice, 2003).

⁶ Council of State Governments, “Building Bridges: From Conviction to Employment—A Proposal to Reinvest Corrections Savings in an Employment Initiative,” January 2003, retrieved at www.csgeast.org/programs/criminal_ justice/BuildingBridges.pdf.

⁷ U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Administration for Children and Families, Working with Incarcerated
and Released Parents: Lessons from OCSE Grants and State Programs (Washington, D.C.: Office of Child Support Enforcement,
2006).

⁸ Office for Victims of Crime, New Directions from the Field: Victims’ Rights and Services for the 21st Century, U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, NCJ 172825 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Justice, 1998).

⁹ Anne Seymour, The Role of Victims in Offender Reentry: A Community Response Manual (Lexington, Ky.: American Probation
and Parole Association, 2001), retrieved at www.appa-net.org/manual.pdf.

¹⁰ The Online Resource Library of the National Center for State Courts can be accessed at www.ncsconline.org/D_KIS/Library/Libraryindex.html.