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In addition to child support and victim restitution, people released from prisons and jails typically owe the wide variety of court fines, supervision fees, and surcharges previously discussed. Such fines and fees have different definitions, depending on the city, county, or state, as the glossary provided in this guide’s Introduction explains.
Typically fines, which may or may not be mandatory, are associated with the level of offense, such as misdemeanor or felony, and the specific type of offense, such as driving while intoxicated or assault. Fees, by contrast, are ordered to reimburse criminal justice agencies or a jurisdiction’s general fund for services rendered (e.g., prosecution, indigent and public defense, incarceration, probation supervision, drug testing, electronic monitoring, and court filing procedures).1 Surcharges are add-on amounts that generate revenue for specific purposes (e.g., funds for law libraries, retirement, and staff training) and are often unrelated to the crime.
Fines, fees, and surcharges, unlike child support and restitution, are financial obligations to the city, county, or state—not to individuals. With a growing percentage of criminal justice agencies’ budgets dependent upon revenue derived from the collection of these additional monies, tensions arise surrounding the priorities of these agencies and the needs of victims and families who rely on individuals released from prisons and jails for compensation and support.
For example, as illustrated in Policy Statement 1, a person convicted of driving while intoxicated who damaged a parked car could owe nearly $8,000 in fines, fees, and surcharges, in addition to the $1,000 restitution he or she would owe to the victim whose car was damaged. As mentioned in Policy Statement 2, if this happened in one of a number of states where fines, fees, and surcharges are collected before restitution, the victim might wait years before receiving any compensation for his or her loss.
Resolving this situation presents a dilemma. Criminal justice agencies rely on the revenue that fines and fees generate to cover a significant percentage of their operating costs. Administrative assessments on misdemeanor citations, for instance, fund nearly all of the Administrative Office of the Court’s budget in Nevada.2 In Iowa, fees paid by people under parole and probation supervision or work release make up approximately 15 percent of the budgets of the state’s community corrections programs.3 Furthermore, elected officials want to be responsive to voters who require accountability from people who have been convicted of crimes and express frustration about how much it costs to administer court and corrections systems.
The current dilemmas notwithstanding, policymakers should be cautious of exacerbating the tensions that already exist among different agencies and individuals due payment. To that end, the following recommendations discuss steps such as preparing reentry impact statements when introducing legislation that contemplates new or increased fines, fees, and surcharges and limiting the extent to which criminal justice agencies rely on fee collection to support their operational costs.
1 The meaning of these terms varies by jurisdiction. This guide uses definitions from “Standards Relating to Court Costs: Fees, Miscellaneous Charges, and Surcharges,” adopted at the Conference of State Court Administrators’ 1986 Annual Meeting, Omaha, Nebraska.
2 Personal communication, Ron Titus, Director, Administrative Office of the Courts, Nevada, May 30, 2006.
3 Personal communication, Linda Murken, Iowa Director of the Second Judicial District Department of Correctional Services, November 14, 2005.
