New Thinking in Community Corrections V E R I TAS

HARVARD Kennedy School

Program in Criminal Justice

Policy and Management

Executive Session on 

Community Corrections 

This is one in a series of papers that will be 

published as a result of the Executive Session on 

Community Corrections. 

The Executive Sessions at Harvard Kennedy 

School bring together individuals of independent 

standing who take joint responsibility for 

rethinking and improving society’s responses to 

an issue. Members are selected based on their 

experiences, their reputation for thoughtfulness 

and their potential for helping to disseminate the 

work of the Session. 

Members of the Executive Session on Community 

Corrections have come together with the aim of 

developing a new paradigm for correctional policy 

at a historic time for criminal justice reform. The 

Executive Session works to explore the role of 

community corrections and communities in the 

interest of justice and public safety. 

Learn more about the Executive Session on 

Community Corrections at: 

NIJ’s website: www.NIJ.gov, keywords “Executive 

Session Community Corrections” 

Harvard’s website: http://www.hks.harvard.edu/ 

criminaljustice/communitycorrections 

 

 

 

JANUARY 2017 • NO. 4
 

Shackled to Debt: Criminal Justice Financial Obligations

and the Barriers to Re-Entry They Create 

Karin D. Martin, Sandra Susan Smith and Wendy Still 

Introduction 

Formerly incarcerated people face a considerable 

number of obstacles to successful re-entry. Their 

ability to graduate from community supervision 

is complicated by their low and eroding levels of 

education and skills (Waldfogel, 1994; Western, 

Lopoo and McLanahan, 2004; Lopoo and 

Western, 2005), serious mental and physical 

health conditions that often go untreated (Travis, 

2000; Mallik-Kane and Visher, 2008; Binswanger, 

Krueger and Steiner, 2009; Rich, Wakeman and 

Dickman, 2011), and alcohol and drug addictions 

(Bureau of Justice Statistics, n.d.; Karberg 

and James, 2005; Mumola and Karberg, 2006), 

which are issues nurtured in neighborhoods of 

concentrated disadvantage from which many 

justice-involved people come. State-sanctioned 

barriers, including government restrictions 

on access to public-sector employment and 

government-related private occupations (Dale, 

1976; May, 1995; Olivares, Burton and Cullen, 

1996; Petersilia, 2003; Bushway and Sweeten, 

2007), restrictions on voting rights (Manza 

and Uggen, 2006), and limited access to public 

housing and social welfare programs also hinder 
Cite this paper as: Martin, Karin D., Sandra Susan Smith, and Wendy Still. 

Shackled to Debt: Criminal Justice Financial Obligations and the Barriers 

to Re-Entry They Create. New Thinking in Community Corrections Bulletin. 

Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Justice, National Institute of Justice, 

2017. NCJ 249976.

 

2 | New Thinking in Community Corrections 

reintegration efforts (Carey, 2004; Thompson, 

2004). Despite recent successes1

 in an effort to 

“ban the box” — the “box” on employment and 

college applications that asks about criminal 

history — the social stigma that justice-involved 

people face further compounds problems with 

re-entry, including their attempts to find work 

(Pager, 2003, 2007). 

To this lengthy list we add yet another significant 

state-sanctioned barrier — criminal justice 

financial obligations (CJFOs), also known as 

monetary sanctions or legal financial obligations. 

There are at least five types of CJFOs (Ruback 

and Bergstrom, 2006; Harris, Evans and Beckett, 

2010): fines and forfeiture of property, which are 

intended as punishment; costs and fees, including 

but not limited to court costs and supervision 

fees, which reimburse the state for costs 

associated with the administration of justice; 

and restitution, a financial payout to specific 

victims or a general fund designated for them, 

intended to compensate victims for the losses 

they have suffered.2 Although some have written 

about the benefits of incorporating CJFOs as one 

option among many criminal justice sanctions 

(Morris and Tonry, 1990; Gordon and Glaser, 

1991; Ruback and Bergstrom, 2006), this form of 

sanction can, if left unchecked, have long-term 

effects that significantly harm the efforts of 

formerly incarcerated people to rehabilitate and 

reintegrate, thus compromising key principles 

of fairness in the administration of justice in 

a democratic society and engendering deep 

distrust of the criminal justice system among 

those overburdened by them. 

In what follows, we describe trends in the 

assessment of CJFOs, discuss the historical 

context within which these trends have unfolded, 

and reflect on their unintended (but perhaps 

easily foreseen) consequences. We then treat 

restitution separately, given the distinct function 

(in theory at least) that restitution serves. We also 

raise serious concerns about how restitution 

tends to be implemented and who benefits from 

this particular obligation. We end by considering 

alternative models for the effective and fair 

deployment of fines, fees and restitution in the 

criminal justice context. 

Historical and Institutional Context 

CJFOs are not new. According to Harris and 

colleagues (2010: 1758), “monetary sanctions 

were integral to systems of criminal justice, 

debt bondage, and racial domination in the 

American South for decades.” Although their 

use waned significantly in the first half of the 

20th century, CJFOs have proliferated since 

the 1980s. As a result of statutes and policies at 

every level — city/municipal, county, state and 

federal — that mandate various forms of CJFOs, 

the vast majority of people who come into contact 

with the criminal justice system and are found 

guilty (and some who are not) pay for these 

encounters or are punished for not doing so. 
Shackled to Debt: Criminal Justice Financial Obligations and the Barriers to Re-entry They Create | 3 

The 1960s and 1970s marked an opening for 

the resurgence of CJFOs. According to Garland 

(2001), the rehabilitative approach to crime and 

punishment had been hegemonic since the 1890s. 

Under this approach, crime was understood in 

terms of relative deprivation. Specifically, when 

deprived of proper education, socialization, 

opportunities and treatment, individuals were 

more likely to become involved with the justice 

system. But with individualized treatment, aid 

to and supervision of families, institutionalized 

supports for education, and job creation and 

training, people would likely abstain from further 

criminal behavior. Mass protests of the 1960s 

and 1970s, however, inspired a marked shift in 

values and approaches to criminal justice. With 

unrest related to the Vietnam War, women’s 

liberation and various Civil Rights revolutions 

threatening to fundamentally disrupt the 

foundation on which well-established racial, 

gendered and class-based hierarchies had been 

built, many people raised serious concerns about 

the rehabilitative approach, arguing that it was 

ineffective (relative to alternative approaches) at 

addressing the emerging threats society faced. 

These critics favored the retributive approach 

instead. In this approach, criminal behavior 

was not considered a deviation from the norm 

but rather a rational choice by self-serving actors 

who were taking advantage of opportunities 

in contexts where sufficient controls and 

disincentives for crime were weak or nonexistent. 

State efforts at retribution, incapacitation and the 

management of risk would effectively curtail such 

self-serving, opportunistic behaviors.3 

With this shift in values came the implementation 

of a set of rigid criminal justice policies — 

determinate sentencing, truth in sentencing, 

mandatory minimums and three strikes — that 

not only drove up rates of incarceration but also 

dramatically increased the numbers of those 

under supervision outside the nation’s jails and 

prisons (Western, 2006; Wacquant, 2009; Raphael 

and Stoll, 2013). Between 1925 and 1975, fewer 

than 100 Americans per 100,000 were in prison. 

By 2003, even though crime rates had remained 

relatively stable, this number had quadrupled 

to more than 400 per 100,000. Further, between 

1983 and 2001, incarceration (jail and prison) in 

the United States increased from 275 inmates 

per 100,000 to 686 inmates per 100,000, more 

than five times the rate in Western European 

countries (Western, 2006). The numbers of people 

under community supervision also increased 

dramatically. In 1980, Wacquant (2009) reports 

that 1.84 million were on probation or parole. By 

1990, that figure had increased to 4.35 million and 

jumped again to 6.47 million by 2000 (Wacquant, 

2009). 

The proliferation of CJFOs was likely a result, direct 

and indirect, of this cultural shift to retribution. 

First, in an era of “just deserts” punishment, the 

increased use of fines and forfeiture, alone or in 

combination with other forms of nonmonetary 

sanctions, signaled to the public that people who 

committed crimes were being made to account 

for their actions (Wacquant, 2009). Second, the 

1970s cultural shift included increased concern 

for victims who, it was argued, should be 
4 | New Thinking in Community Corrections 

made whole — through reparations — after 

experiencing crime-related losses (Office for 

Victims of Crime, 2013; Garland, 2001). 

Third — and perhaps most important — as 

the criminal justice apparatus swelled to 

accommodate the oceans of people cycling in 

and out of the system’s courts, jails, prisons, and 

probation and parole departments, so too have 

the costs to operate such a system. For instance, 

Wacquant (2009) shows that, between 1980 and 

1997, criminal justice budgets — those devoted 

to police, justice and corrections — increased 

from roughly $35 billion to $130 billion per 

year. Growth in criminal justice personnel also 

skyrocketed, from approximately 1.3 million 

in 1980 to 2.1 million in 1997. Wacquant (2009) 

notes that, based on the number of personnel 

in 1997, American criminal justice was the third 

largest employer in the country, second only to 

Manpower, Inc., and Walmart. 

However, legislators have been reluctant to pass 

these dramatically rising costs on to taxpayers. 

Jurisdictions have instead shifted more of the 

costs to justice-involved people through CJFOs 

(Wacquant, 2009), implicating every stage of 

criminal case processing (Bannon, Nagrecha 

and Diller, 2010).4

 They have done so in at least 

three ways — by imposing numerous new fines, 

fees and surcharges; by increasing the amounts 

associated with CJFOs; and by adopting more 

proactive strategies to collect debt. In California, 

for instance, 16 different statutes codify 269 

separate court fines, fees, forfeitures, surcharges 

and penalty assessments that, depending on 

the type of offense, may now be assessed (Nieto, 

2006). Texas has 15 categories of court costs 

that are “always assessed” and an additional 18 

discretionary CJFOs that include fees for being 

committed or released from jail (Texas District 

Court, 2013). In Washington state, a defendant 

with a single conviction is subjected to 24 fines 

and fees (Beckett and Harris, 2011). 

Jurisdictions have also shifted costs to justiceinvolved people by increasing the amounts 

and numbers of fines, fees and surcharges they 

assess. For instance, since 1996, Florida added 

more than 20 new categories of CJFOs and 

recently increased amounts of existing fees and 

surcharges in two consecutive years (Bannon, 

Nagrecha and Diller, 2010; Diller, 2010). In New 

York state — where the laws require 10 mandatory 

surcharges, 19 fees5 and six civil penalties ranging 

from $5 to $750 — lawmakers have repeatedly 

increased the amounts and numbers of fees and 

surcharges since the early 1990s (Rosenthal and 

Weissman, 2007). In 2008 alone, two “additional 

surcharges” were assessed for driving offenses; 

fees for assistance to victims of misdemeanor 

crimes and felony crimes were increased by $5 

each; and surcharges for felonies, misdemeanors 

and violations were increased by $5 to $50 

(Bannon, Nagrecha and Diller, 2010). In 2009, 

North Carolina initiated two new fees — a $25 

late fee for debtors making tardy payments and 

a $20 surcharge for those wishing to establish a 

payment plan for their CJFOs. North Carolina also 

increased fees for defendants who fail to appear 

in court and increased the costs associated with 

lab tests (Bannon, Nagrecha and Diller, 2010). 
Shackled to Debt: Criminal Justice Financial Obligations and the Barriers to Re-entry They Create | 5 

 

 

 

Since 2010, 48 states have increased civil and 

criminal fees (Shapiro, 2014), a likely response 

to government coffers emptied by the effects of 

the Great Recession (Burch, 2011; Government 

Accountability Office, 2015). It is no wonder, then, 

that CJFOs have become ubiquitous.6 

With ubiquity, the odds of justice-involved 

persons receiving one or more monetary 

sanctions and the median amounts assessed 

have increased substantially.7

 For instance, 

Harris and colleagues (2010) report that 

25 percent of federal prison inmates were 

assessed fines, but that figure rose to 66 percent 

by 2004 — only 13 years later.8 Although the 

prevalence of fines and restitution payments 

subsided to 32 percent of federal nonimmigration 

cases in 2015, it is important to note that the 

overwhelming majority of cases for some federal 

offenses — robbery, fraud, larceny, arson and 

burglary, for instance — received a fine or were 

required to pay restitution (U.S. Sentencing 

Commission, 2015). 

On the state level, 4 percent of persons convicted 

of felonies who were sentenced to prison in 1986 

were also fined; by 2004, that figure was seven 

times higher (28 percent) (Harris, Evans and 

Beckett, 2010). On the local level, 12 percent 

of persons charged with felonies who were 

sentenced to jail in 1985 (awaiting trial or serving 

time for less serious felonies) were also fined; by 

2004, that figure tripled to 37 percent. In addition, 

17 percent of people on probation for felonies in 

1986 were also fined; by 2004, that figure more 

than doubled to 36 percent. 

For persons who are incarcerated, the 

overwhelming majority now accumulate mounds 

of debt due to numerous fees while behind bars. 

A 1997 survey of the nation’s largest jails revealed 

that more than three-quarters of people in jail 

were charged fees for a host of programs and 

services, most notably medical care, per diem 

payments, work release programs and telephone 

use; the latter three produced the greatest revenue 

by far. By 2005, that figure had risen to 90 percent. 

In addition, more than 85 percent of people on 

probation and parole are now required to pay 

supervision fees, fines, court costs or restitution 

to victims to remain free from further sanctions 

(Travis and Petersilia, 2001; Rainville and Reaves, 

2003; Siegel and Senna, 2007). 

The result of this expansion in the numbers and 

amounts of CJFOs, deployed at every stage of 

criminal case processing, is that some 10 million 

people owe more than $50 billion from contact 

with the criminal justice system (National Center 

for Victims of Crime, 2011; Evans, 2014; Eisen, 

2015).9

 To be clear, jurisdictions collect only 

a fraction of this debt each year; for instance, 

people owe the federal government more 

than $100 billion in criminal debt, and federal 

judges assessed nearly $14 billion in monetary 

penalties in fiscal year 2014, but the federal 

government collects only $4 billion each year (U.S. 

Department of Justice, 2015). Nevertheless, CJFOs 

still produce significant revenue for federal, state 

and municipal coffers. According to the Criminal 

Court of the City of New York (2014), in the New 

York metropolitan area, fines generate 47 percent 

of criminal court revenue, which is then split 
6 | New Thinking in Community Corrections 

between New York City and the state. Another 

report finds that “administrative assessments 

on citations fund nearly all of the Administrative 

Office of the Court’s budget in Nevada [and] ... 

[i]n Texas, probation fees made up 46 percent of 

the Travis County Probation Department’s $18.3 

million budget in 2006” (McLean and Thompson, 

2007: 3). In Ferguson, Missouri — the site of 

major protests against police brutality inspired 

by the death of 18-year-old Michael Brown at the 

hands of a Ferguson police officer — fines, fees 

and surcharges, which are generously assessed 

and aggressively collected (particularly during 

periods of projected general revenue shortfalls) 

covered slightly more than 20 percent of the 

general revenue fund. In nearby towns, this 

figure was much higher. 

Unintended Consequences 

Four principles have informed an ideal of how 

justice in the United States should be meted 

out — (1) the punishment should fit the crime 

(proportionality); (2) the punishment should 

not exceed the minimum needed to achieve 

its legitimate purpose (parsimony); (3) the 

punishment should not compromise a formerly 

incarcerated person’s chance to lead a fulfilling 

and successful life (citizenship); and (4) penal 

systems should avoid reproducing social 

inequalities, especially given that formerly 

incarcerated people disproportionately come 

from disadvantaged families and communities 

(National Research Council, 2014). These 

principles must be a part of any deliberation to 

establish fair and just penal policies and practices. 

However, it seems these principles have largely 

been ignored in order to recover the costs of a 

behemoth penal apparatus by increasing the 

amounts and numbers of CJFOs. As a result, on 

all levels of government, policymakers’ actions 

have produced a set of unintended and negative 

consequences — especially for poor people and 

people of color — a point we turn to next. 

Law Enforcement or Debt Collection? 

During periods of economic downturn, 

government revenues from various forms of 

taxes inevitably fall; the temptation is to fund 

government by adding new fees and surcharges, 

increasing the size of CJFOs, and deploying 

law enforcement in ever more aggressive debt 

collection strategies. This will be too much for 

some jurisdictions to ignore, especially if the 

failure to engage in these practices would lead to 

budget deficits otherwise resolved with job cuts 

in the system. Indeed, since 2010, several states 

(including but not limited to Arizona, Louisiana, 

Ohio and Texas) have implemented new fees and 

increased already existing surcharges and fees 

to address 2010 budget shortfalls (Burch, 2011). 

Given this, we must consider what perverse 

incentives we create by tying the solvency of major 

institutions to criminal justice enforcement. 

Essentially, the basic conflict that emerges when 

a public institution is both the originator and 

the beneficiary of financial obligations is that 

resources are directed away from other critical, 

but less lucrative, law-enforcing or adjudicating 

tasks (e.g., clearing backlogs of DNA analysis or 

testing rape kits).10 
Shackled to Debt: Criminal Justice Financial Obligations and the Barriers to Re-entry They Create | 7 

Perhaps more egregious is that such pressures 

can foster collusion between government 

agencies to generate revenue via law enforcement. 

Indeed, Ferguson provides stark evidence 

that court officials’ use of law enforcement 

to generate revenue to fund government can 

lead to corruption and injustice, especially for 

vulnerable populations. There, the city finance 

director explicitly urged both the police chief 

and the city manager to write more tickets in 

order to fill municipal coffers. In other words, 

the system in Ferguson sought to extract 

income for the county and state from some 

of its most disenfranchised citizens, often 

through unconstitutional stops and arrests. Also, 

according to the Department of Justice report on 

Ferguson, law enforcement practices — driven in 

part by racial bias — produced and exacerbated 

racial disparities throughout local policing, court 

and jail systems.11 The overwhelming majority 

of those arrested only because of an outstanding 

municipal (civil) warrant (96 percent) were 

African-American (U.S. Department of Justice, 

2015). As a result, they bore a disproportionate 

burden as the primary population targeted to 

make up for government revenue shortfalls. 

Adjacent cities and towns were no better, nor is it 

clear that such practices are specific to Missouri. 

Evidence from California reveals similar patterns 

of disproportionate harm of CJFO enforcement on 

minority communities (e.g., Lawyers’ Committee 

for Civil Rights of the San Francisco Bay Area, 

2015). Moreover, because contact with police is 

the common entry point to the criminal justice 

system, any role of CJFOs in increasing exposure 

to police merits careful scrutiny because such 

incentives can encourage more aggressive 

policing and punitive punishments targeted at 

the poorest and most powerless among us. 

The same pressures to produce revenue affect 

probation and parole officers, who end up 

facing mutually incompatible demands. As 

social workers, they are expected to assess the 

needs of people under supervision and facilitate 

treatment. As law enforcement agents, they 

are expected to monitor and surveil formerly 

incarcerated persons (Rothman, 1980; Travis 

and Petersilia, 2001; Wodahl and Garland, 2009). 

As debt collectors, they are expected to monitor 

payments, set up payment plans, aggressively 

press people under supervision to pay courtordered and community corrections-related 

CJFOs, and penalize them (including revoking 

probation or parole) for missed payments 

(Bannon, Nagrecha and Diller, 2010). The first 

two responsibilities relate to public safety 

concerns but pit the “officer as advocate” who 

offers individualized treatment against the 

“officer as law enforcement agent” who manages 

risk.12 The third responsibility, however, does 

not ensure public safety at all; perhaps with the 

exception of restitution to victims, it is solely 

about generating revenue, which is disbursed to 

a general fund or to criminal justice agencies. But 

this third responsibility is the one that is likely to 

be prioritized in a system whose financial health 

and well-being — indeed, the stability of officers’ 

very own positions — hinge on it. Such efforts, 

however, distract from officers’ responsibilities to 

ensure public safety and facilitate rehabilitation. 

Given the incentives inherent in prioritizing 
8 | New Thinking in Community Corrections 

 

 

officers’ roles as debt collectors, we might 

have anticipated some of the unfair and unjust 

practices that have emerged. 

Punishing the Poor 

CJFOs can be quite daunting. In some states, 

however, it is difficult to say with any precision 

exactly how much those who have had contact 

with the criminal justice system have been 

assessed because, according to Bannon and 

colleagues (2010), information about fees, fines, 

surcharges and restitution cannot be found in 

any one statutory code, and different types of 

monetary sanctions are collected at different 

stages of criminal case processing. Case studies 

of different jurisdictions have been revealing. 

Amounts vary by state but, for example, court 

records from 2005 to 2011 reveal that persons 

convicted of felonies in Alabama accrued a 

median of about $5,000 in CJFOs (Meredith 

and Morse, 2015). The Texas Office of Court 

Administration reports that individuals released 

on parole owe between $500 and $2,000 in 

offense-related debt, a figure that does not 

include restitution. A recent study examining the 

hidden costs of incarceration finds that families 

of the formerly incarcerated incur, on average, 

$13,607 for court-related fines and fees (deVuonopowell et al., 2015). An analysis of data from 

Washington state revealed court assessments 

ranging from a minimum of $500 (mandatory for 

all felony convictions) to a maximum of $256,257; 

the median amount assessed per person was 

$5,254 and the mean was $11,471 (Harris, Evans 

and Beckett, 2010). Because the vast majority 

of formerly incarcerated people are poor or 

near poor (Western, 2006), these figures are not 

inconsequential. In the short or long term, most 

of them simply could not afford to fulfill these 

unreasonably high debt burdens. 

Further, being indigent rarely exempts a person 

from CJFOs.13 Focusing on the 15 states with 

the largest prison populations, Bannon and 

colleagues (2010) identified four mechanisms 

through which the courts’ administration 

of CJFOs have created barriers to re-entry. 

First, even when courts had the discretion 

to waive or modify monetary sanctions, few 

considered whether people had the financial 

resources to meet these obligations, and few 

had institutionalized mechanisms to reduce 

CJFOs contingent on people’s financial resources 

(Bannon, Nagrecha and Diller, 2010). Second, few 

states provided adequate payment plans to allow 

formerly incarcerated people who are indigent to 

pay down their debts over time; among states that 

did, some required that people pay a fee to apply.14 

Third, for indigent individuals, jurisdictions 

could replace CJFOs with community service. 

Some of the 15 states studied, however, did not 

offer community service as an alternative, and 

those that did offered limited options that the 

courts rarely chose. Nor do these states offer 

exemptions from the consequences associated 

with inability to pay because of indigence. Unpaid 

CJFOs are subject not only to unreasonably 

high interest on court-imposed sanctions but 

are also routinely subject to late fees, fees for 

payment plans, and debt collection fees (Bannon, 

Nagrecha and Diller, 2010).15 Consequently, 

formerly incarcerated people and their family 
Shackled to Debt: Criminal Justice Financial Obligations and the Barriers to Re-entry They Create | 9 

 

 

 

 

 

members, who often shoulder the bulk of the 

legal debt burden (Wacquant, 2009; deVuonopowell et al., 2015; Nagrecha and Katzenstein, 

2015), can be saddled with these obligations for 

decades. Therein lies one of the major problems 

with CJFOs, as applied in the U.S. For many, there 

is no end to the resulting debt (Beckett, Harris 

and Evans, 2008; American Civil Liberties 

Union, 2010; Harris, Evans and Beckett, 2010; 

Bannon, Nagrecha and Diller, 2010; Katzenstein 

and Nagrecha, 2011). The common, significant 

time lag between assessment and final payment 

undermines the goal of finality in punishment 

and poses significant obstacles to achieving 

stability because even small monthly payments 

on debt could reduce take-home pay substantially 

among disadvantaged families and thus make 

it extremely difficult to meet other needs and 

obligations (deVuono-powell et al., 2015). 

For many, criminal justice debt can also 

trigger a cascade of debilitating consequences, 

many of which undermine post-incarceration 

re-entry goals such as finding stable housing, 

transportation and employment (Bannon, 

Nagrecha and Diller, 2010; Beckett and Harris, 

2011). For instance, Bannon and colleagues 

(2010) find that legal debt can be a hindrance 

to obtaining a driver’s license,16 can restrict 

voting rights,17 and can interfere with obtaining 

credit and making child support payments. 

Criminal justice debt can also prompt additional 

warrants, liens, wage garnishment and tax rebate 

interception. In addition, it can lead to a civil 

judgment, which is available to credit agencies 

because this information is made public. With 

poorer credit scores, individuals with legal debt 

also risk being denied employment, and they 

may be unable to secure credit cards, mortgages, 

leases or loans. Thus, employment, housing and 

transportation are all jeopardized. And, to be 

clear, in each of these areas the impacts are far 

greater for racial minorities than for whites, not 

solely because the former are disproportionately 

represented in the criminal justice system. 

Not only are they more likely to be targets of 

aggressive law enforcement practices, once 

caught in the criminal justice net they are also 

penalized more harshly (Rosich, 2007; Spohn, 

2000; Mitchell and MacKenzie, 2004; Jannetta et 

al., 2014; Starr and Rehavi, 2012). 

For some formerly incarcerated individuals, 

these liabilities may also have the unintended 

consequence of reducing commitment to work, 

increasing reliance on available forms of public 

assistance (in some cases, CJFOs can make a 

person ineligible for receiving public assistance), 

or motivating further criminal involvement. 

According to Harris and colleagues (2010), 80 

percent of the respondents found their legal debt 

obligations to be “unduly burdensome.” Despite 

the possibility that they might be sanctioned 

with jail time for nonpayment, some chose not 

to work, instead engaging in criminal activity 

or relying on state benefits (where these had not 

been revoked because of CJFOs) to make ends 

meet (also see Martin, 2015). 

Perhaps the most intolerable penalty that formerly 

incarcerated people who are indigent face for 

inability to pay CJFOs is to be re-incarcerated. A 
10 | New Thinking in Community Corrections 

 

lawsuit18 against the City of Ferguson, Missouri 

describes the experience of Ms. Fant, which 

illustrates this concern: 

Ms. Fant was a 37-year-old single mother who 

worked as a certified nurse’s assistant. Over the 

course of 20 years, she was arrested more than a 

dozen times. On the way to taking her children 

to school one day in 2013, she was arrested and 

taken to jail because of old traffic tickets. She 

was initially told that she would only be released 

after paying $300, but she was then “released” 

for free. Being released, however, just meant 

that the arresting jurisdiction had dropped its 

demand for money. Because she had unpaid 

tickets in other nearby places (that paid for a 

central city to house their jail inmates), “release” 

meant she was kept in the same jail under the 

auspices of other jurisdictions. As a result, she 

was held in a single jail, but transferred to the 

custody of one jurisdiction to another, totaling 

five different jurisdictions — each holding her 

for three to four days and each insisting on 

hundreds or thousands of dollars to secure her 

liberty. Eventually, she was told that her release 

amount was $1,400, but after it was clear she 

would not be able to come up with the money, 

she was released without paying anything. This 

freedom was temporary. The following year, she 

was arrested again and told that she would have 

to pay $1,400 or be held indefinitely. This time, her 

family and friends came up with $1,000 and she 

was released. She was told to make future cash 

payments directly to the Police Department. 

Despite the Supreme Court ruling in Bearden v. 

Georgia (461 U.S. 660-661, 1983), which found 

that inability to pay cannot be the reason to 

revoke probation or to re-incarcerate,19 there is 

ample evidence that inability to pay is indeed 

associated with expanded custody (American 

Civil Liberties Union, 2010). Incarceration can 

follow CJFOs in at least four ways. First, probation 

and parole can be revoked or not granted for 

nonpayment of CJFOs. According to Bannon and 

colleagues (2010), regardless of the fact that none 

of the 15 states they studied adequately sought to 

determine individuals’ ability to pay, at least 13 of 

these states allowed for revocation of probation 

and parole in cases where formerly incarcerated 

persons missed payments. Second, criminal 

and civil offenses can result in incarceration 

via willful failure to pay CJFOs, an action that 

is interpreted as civil contempt. Third, in some 

states (such as Missouri), criminal justice 

debtors can “pay off” their debt by “choosing” 

jail — requesting to participate in programs that 

allow them to pay down court-imposed debt by 

spending time in jail. Finally, individuals can be 

arrested and jailed in some states (e.g., Texas) for 

missing a debt payment or for failing to appear at 

a court hearing relating to a missed debt payment 

(e.g., Georgia). In February 2016, for instance, 

seven armed U.S. Marshals arrested and jailed 

Paul Aker, a Texas resident, for failure to appear 

in court to address a 29-year-old delinquent 

federal student loan; the original loan was 

$1,500 (Lobosco, 2016). Roughly one-quarter of 

the respondents in Harris and colleagues’ 2010 

study served time in jail for nonpayment of fees 

and fines; another study found that 12 percent 

had been re-incarcerated for missing payments 

(deVuono-powell et al., 2015). Thus, as assessed 
Shackled to Debt: Criminal Justice Financial Obligations and the Barriers to Re-entry They Create | 11 

 

 

and administered in the U.S., CJFOs can be quite 

punitive and insufficiently parsimonious. In 

those instances, their administration challenges 

even basic notions of citizenship rights and social 

justice. 

Distrust and Demoralization 

When people perceive that law enforcement 

officials have treated them unfairly, they come 

to distrust the motives of legal authorities and 

to negatively assess the procedures by which 

legal authorities engage them. They also come 

to question the very legitimacy on which law 

enforcement’s authorit y rests, feeding an 

unwillingness to consent or to cooperate with 

law enforcement in general (Tyler and Huo, 2002). 

Thus, to the extent that CJFOs are administered 

in unfair and unjust ways, it should come as no 

surprise that the U.S. system of CJFOs breeds 

deep distrust of the criminal justice system, 

especially among the poor and people of color. 

To illustrate, the Department of Justice (DOJ) 

report on Ferguson highlighted how the unfair, 

unlawful, disrespectful and harmful practices 

of the police and the courts, both in Ferguson 

and in nearby towns and cities, led Ferguson’s 

black residents to both fear and distrust them, 

further deteriorating already strained relations 

between law enforcement and the communities 

they are tasked to serve as well as contributing to 

less effective, more difficult, less safe and more 

discriminatory policing (U.S. Department of 

Justice, 2015). 

CJFOs may also be demoralizing for officers, 

especially police, probation and parole officers. 

When signing on for service, most of them 

likely imagined that they would help make their 

communities safer and would positively impact 

the lives of those at high risk for future criminal 

involvement. Few, if any, signed up to become 

debt collectors. But, in many jurisdictions, 

systemic pressure to produce revenue puts 

officers in this position, whether or not they like 

it. In Ferguson, for instance, where community 

policing efforts had never been more than modest, 

their efforts had recently declined further to 

focus more police time and energy on revenue 

generation. According to the DOJ report (U.S. 

Department of Justice, 2015: 87): 

Officers we spoke with were fairly consistent in 

their acknowledgment of this, and of the fact 

that this move away from community policing 

has been due, at least in part, to an increased 

focus on code enforcement and revenue 

generation in recent years. [O]ur investigation 

found that FPD redeployed officers to 12-hour 

shifts, in part for revenue reasons ... . While 

many officers in Ferguson support 12-hour 

shifts, several told us that the 12-hour shift 

has undermined community policing. One 

officer said that “FPD used to have a strong 

community policing ethic — then we went 

to a 12-hour day.” ... Another officer told us 

that FPD officers should put less energy into 

writing tickets and instead “get out of their cars” 

and get to know community members. One 

officer told us that officers could spend more 

time engaging with community members 

and undertaking problem-solving projects if 

FPD officers were not so focused on activities 
12 | New Thinking in Community Corrections 

that generate revenue. This officer told us, 

“everything’s about the courts ... the court’s 

enforcement priorities are money.” 

It is difficult to say how widespread the perception 

is among officers that debt collection has directed 

attention away from arguably more important 

roles that law enforcement officers can play in the 

communities they serve, but the comments that 

officers in Ferguson shared suggest that officers’ 

morale might be a part of the collateral damage 

from the expansion of a monetary sanctions 

system that relies heavily on officers’ efforts to 

collect debts. 

Victims and Restitution 

Restitution stands somewhat apart from the 

other types of CJFOs. It is meant to be assessed 

when there is both an identifiable victim and 

quantifiable (i.e., “monetizable”) harm to person 

or property. The underlying notion is to directly 

compensate a crime victim for a specific loss 

stemming from the offense. Therefore, on the 

federal level at least, restitution is mandatory for 

several categories of offenses, as stipulated in 

the Mandatory Victims Restitution Act of 1996.20 

Problems arise, however, when we examine 

both the practice and the consequences of 

restitution as it is actually implemented. First, 

the system of payment and disbursement very 

often severs the direct link between the person 

who committed the crime and the victim. A judge 

may issue either a direct order for restitution, 

which is related to a victim’s loss, or the person 

who committed the offense may have to pay to a 

general restitution fund. The first case preserves 

the notion of “restoration” inherent in restitution, 

but the second case is far less clear. Surely, a 

victim who cannot collect from the person who 

actually committed the offense still benefits 

from compensation from a state restitution fund. 

Indeed, Vermont (where the average individual 

restitution order is $1,100) has a system that 

allows for victims to be paid immediately 

upon court order, using capital funded by a 

15-percent surcharge on all criminal and civil 

fines (Vermont Center for Crime Victim Services, 

2012). But the flip side of this arrangement is that 

people convicted of offenses must contribute to 

compensating victims of crimes in which they 

played no role (and even when they have inflicted 

no harm to an identifiable victim or property). 

How this ultimately weighs in the balance in 

terms of ethics is beyond the scope of this report; 

however, the situation merits careful attention 

when considering the universe of CJFOs and their 

consequences. 

The second problem with restitution is the 

enormous, intractable and growing gap 

between the restitution amounts assessed and 

the amounts actually collected and disbursed. 

By one estimate, total state restitution debt was 

nearly $40 billion in 2007 (Dickman, 2009). At the 

federal level, there is more than $100 billion in 

uncollected criminal debt, of which restitution 

is a large portion. Collection rates across the 

country reveal the extent of the problem. In 

Florida, people convicted of felonies owe $709 

million of restitution debt, of which the state 
Shackled to Debt: Criminal Justice Financial Obligations and the Barriers to Re-entry They Create | 13 

 

collects 4.5 percent (Burnett, 2012). In Iowa, 

judges ordered $159 million in restitution over 

a five-year period but collected only $19 million 

during the same period (12 percent of the amount 

owed) (Eckhoff, 2012). In Texas, the parole 

division collected 5.3 percent of the $43 million 

that discharged parolees owed between 2003 

and 2008; fewer than 10 percent of parolees paid 

their restitution in full (Vogel, 2008). Vermont’s 

restitution collection rate of 31.8 percent for 

2005 to 2010 is, by comparison, relatively high 

(National Center for Victims of Crime, 2011). 

Not only are collection rates generally poor,21 

but the amount of outstanding restitution debt 

is growing. For instance, the amount of unpaid 

restitution in Florida grew 51 percent between 

2007 and 2012 (Burnett, 2012). 

Of course, these low collection rates mean low 

disbursement rates — very few victims are paid 

or are paid in full. Pennsylvania, for example, 

disbursed less than 12 percent of the $435 

million it assessed in restitution for the three 

years ending in 2012 (Pennsylvania Office of 

the Victim Advocate and the Center for Schools 

and Communities, 2013). Minnesota assesses 

$25 million in restitution, with an individual 

average of $2,100. Of this, only 25 percent is paid, 

but taking into account restitution that is reduced, 

adjusted or credited, the amount of restitution 

that is “satisfied” reaches 49 percent. There is also 

significant variation by county: outstanding debt 

ranges from as low as 6 percent of the assessed 

amount to as high as 83 percent (Minnesota 

Restitution Working Group, 2015). 

Finally, it is essential to remember that — from 

the perspective of the debtor — restitution is 

simply part of a formidable amount of criminal 

justice debt. Importantly, this debt incurs 

disproportionate harm. An analysis of 80,000 

Florida correctional cases found that unpaid 

restitution rendered almost 40 percent of the 

debtors ineligible to have their rights restored 

(Diller, 2010). In sum, although restitution serves 

a particularly distinct function compared to the 

other CJFOs, it suffers from pitfalls that render it 

just as problematic. 

Recommendations 

As administered in the U.S. system, CJFOs can 

be punitive and insufficiently parsimonious. 

As others have written (Bannon, Nagrecha and 

Diller, 2010; deVuono-powell et al., 2015), we 

can and must do better. In what follows, we 

offer recommendations for reform. Although 

these recommendations will not reverse the 

damage done to individuals, their families 

and the communities they come from, if these 

or similar reforms are implemented moving 

forward, millions of people who are enmeshed 

in the criminal justice system might avoid the 

same troubling fate. 

We propose two sets of reforms. The first regards 

the use of CJFOs for low-income or poor people 

and includes six recommendations. First, when 

setting out to use CJFOs to punish and deter 

or repair and reimburse victims, we must 

consider people’s ability to pay. In the U.S., 

statutorily mandated fines, fees, surcharges 

and restitution are not adjusted to ability to 
14 | New Thinking in Community Corrections 

 

pay (Justice Management Institute and Vera 

Institute of Justice, 1996). However, tailoring 

the sanction to the individual, as is often done 

in parts of Europe (Kantorowicz, 2014), would 

avoid many of the deleterious effects found in 

the American CJFO system. In Europe, “dayfines” (as they are called) are calculated on the 

basis of a person’s financial situation — typically 

by calculating a percentage of income — and the 

severity of the offense (Hillsman and Mahoney, 

1988; Vera Institute of Justice, 1988).22 In addition, 

because the financial burden on the individual 

is considered seriously as part of the assessment 

rationale, European countries that have adopted 

this approach have been able to generate income 

without undermining the basic tenets of effective 

criminal justice policy (Frase, 2001).23 

Second, additional safeguards need to be 

implemented so as not to penalize the poor for 

being poor. The short- and long-term prospects 

for people who are formerly incarcerated or under 

supervision are also negatively affected by the 

interest that accrues on criminal justice debt 

as well as the fees and penalties for delinquent 

payments, payment plans and debt collector 

services. These contribute to poverty entrapment 

by further increasing the debt burden for these 

individuals, making it difficult to make ends 

meet and blocking opportunities for social and 

economic stability and mobility. As a penalty 

for tardy or missed payments, or missed court 

hearings because of delinquent payments, 

(re)incarceration also penalizes the poor. Very 

simply, these poverty penalties need to be 

eliminated — interest should not be allowed 

to accrue on the CJFOs that are assessed; the 

poor, as objectively determined, should not 

have to pay fees to apply for payment plans, as 

penalties for late payments, or as part of an 

aggressive campaign of debt collection; and 

under no circumstances should individuals 

be incarcerated for delinquency on financial 

obligations related to criminal or civil judgments. 

Importantly, by taking an individual’s financial 

resources into consideration and eliminating 

poverty penalties, we also end indeterminate 

punishment and related debt; individuals will 

be relieved of criminal justice debt and related 

incarceration that can extend for decades, if not 

a lifetime. 

Third, alternatives to monetary sanctions should 

also be considered more seriously than they are, 

especially where indigent persons are concerned. 

Financial transactions are not the sole means by 

which people can be made to account for their 

actions and make victims whole. As indicated 

earlier in the report, community service is an 

available option in most states, although it is used 

infrequently. When implemented judiciously, 

however, this would seem to be a reasonable 

substitute for monetary sanctions. 

Fourth, jurisdictions should consider amnesty 

for those who already hold debt. The evidence 

provided here shows the questionable value of 

pursuing debt from people unable to pay. Indeed, 

when the cost and social harm of enforcing CJFO 

collections is greater than the benefit of (typically 

partial) payment, there is a strong argument for 

amnesty. Accounting for and excusing CJFO debt 
Shackled to Debt: Criminal Justice Financial Obligations and the Barriers to Re-entry They Create | 15 

 

not only allows people to exit the destructive cycle 

of debt, warrants, arrests, court judgments and 

incarceration, it also helps clear the prodigious 

administrative backlog that typifies U.S. court 

systems. 

Fifth, if any fees are collected, they should be 

deposited into a trust account to be invested solely 

in direct rehabilitation services for the supervised 

population. This approach is similar to the inmate 

welfare funds that are mandatory for jails and 

prisons for fees collected from inmates, which can 

only be expended on direct programs or services 

that benefit the inmate’s welfare. In a similar vein, 

we offer a sixth recommendation that connects 

criminal justice debt to the improved well-being 

of those who are involved in the justice system. To 

the extent that they invest in their own education 

and vocational training, their fees might be 

significantly reduced or erased. In this way, the 

government incentivizes behaviors it wishes to 

see, with the prospect of reduced victimization 

and improved public safety. 

The second set of reforms addresses the criminal 

justice system’s growing reliance on CJFOs for 

their own operations and maintenance. The 

criminal justice system is meant to serve the 

general public. As such, it is logical and just to 

insist that each of us bears this burden. Instead, 

however, we increasingly require that people who 

have had contact with the criminal justice system 

pay a disproportionate share for its operation; 

in so doing, we link the financial solvency of 

the institution to law enforcement practices. 

This incentivizes law enforcement to redirect 

efforts away from critical, but less lucrative, law 

enforcing toward those activities that, while 

doing little to promote public safety, would 

generate significant revenue for government 

coffers, thus putting revenue, not safety, first. 

To rectif y this, we first propose that an 

independent commission should be established 

in each jurisdiction to determine the causes and 

consequences of proposed increases to criminal 

justice fees, fines, surcharges and the like. CJFOs 

should not be allowed to increase in size and/or 

number unless studies determine that changes 

would not unduly burden those subject to 

them. The institutional health and well-being of 

criminal justice institutions should not hinge on 

the amount and number of CJFOs assessed; this 

is the purpose of general tax revenue. 

Our second proposal is that the roles criminal 

justice officers — probation, parole and police 

officers — play should be limited to efforts that 

increase public safety. Law enforcement officers 

should not be tasked with the responsibility to 

collect debts. Their roles are already complicated 

by what some consider to be mutually 

incompatible demands — being advocate 

and counselor as well as law enforcement and 

disciplinarian. To add a debt collection function 

to their roles forces officers to pit their own 

jobs and that of the institution that employs 

them against the efforts of individuals in their 

charge at rehabilitation and successful re-entry. 

Not only would this conflict further complicate 

what is already a difficult balancing act but, in 

essence, it would also direct attention away from 

the more important task of facilitating increased 

public safety. 
16 | New Thinking in Community Corrections 

Endnotes 

1. Boston, San Francisco and Minneapolis 

were early adopters (Henry and Jacobs, 2007). 

Currently, more than 100 cities and counties 

nationwide have implemented “ban the box” 

policies (Rodriguez and Avery, 2016). 

2. In this report we do not consider child support. 

Although child support often contributes to the 

debilitating debt that justice-involved people 

have, it has been treated extensively elsewhere. 

(See Grall, 2003, and Cammett, 2006, for 

discussions of child support debt as it relates to 

justice-system involvement; also see Nagrecha 

and Katzenstein, 2015; Thoennes, 2002; U.S. 

Department of Health and Human Services, 2006; 

and Pearson, 2004.) 

3. See Garland (2001) for a full discussion of this 

cultural shift. 

4. User fees are commonly assessed at 

preconviction; for instance, defendants can 

be charged booking fees, application fees to 

obtain a public defender, and jail fees for pretrial 

detention. At sentencing, fines associated with 

convictions are typically accompanied by 

surcharges; the amount of restitution to victims 

is determined; and fees mount up for court 

costs, designated funds and reimbursement for 

public defenders and prosecution. During jail 

or prison stays, fees are routinely assessed for a 

variety of programs and services, most commonly 

for medical services (including prescriptions, 

physician/nurse visits, dental care and eye care), 

participation in work release programs, per diem 

payments and telephone use. Among the CJFOs 

added to the tab of probationers and parolees 

are monthly fees for supervision (including 

electronic monitoring) and administration 

fees for the installation of monitoring devices, 

drug testing, mandatory treatment, therapy 

and classes. Further, at each stage of criminal 

case processing, there are interest charges and 

penalties for tardy payments, application fees 

for payment plans, and fees for debt collection 

services — all adding to the heavy weight of 

accumulated debt placed on justice-involved 

people, who are already disproportionately at a 

disadvantage economically and educationally 

(Bannon, Nagrecha and Diller, 2010). 

5. Included are fees for crime victim assistance, 

incarceration, DNA databanking, parole and 

probation supervision, sex offender registration, 

and supplemental payments to sex offender 

victims. 

6. Despite its “growing normativity” (Katzenstein 

and Nagrecha, 2011), policies and practices 

related to the assessment, administration 

and collection of CJFOs are quite diverse. 

Jurisdictions typically have dozens of statutes 

mandating fines, fees and surcharges, but every 

comparison of jurisdictions — federal versus 

state, between states, between counties within 

a single state, and even between courthouses — 

reveals a substantial array of differences. 
Shackled to Debt: Criminal Justice Financial Obligations and the Barriers to Re-entry They Create | 17 

7. Meredith and Morse (2015) illustrate this well 

with case studies of Alabama and Tennessee. 

8. These data are from the Survey of Inmates in 

State and Federal Correctional Facilities. The 

authors make clear that these figures likely 

underestimate the use of CJFOs because they 

do not include those assessed by departments 

of corrections, jails or other noncourt agencies 

(Harris, Evans and Beckett, 2010). 

9. In the federal system, more than $14 billion 

in monetary penalties was assessed in fiscal 

year 2014 for up to 96 percent of cases for some 

offenses. In a study of CJFOs in 11 states, the 

average amount of uncollected debt was $178 

million per state (McLean and Thompson, 2007). 

California alone had $10.2 billion in outstanding 

court-ordered debt at the end of 2012 (Taylor, 

2014). As of 2010, Iowa and Arizona reported 

unpaid court-ordered obligations on the order 

of $533 million and $831 million, respectively. 

Pennsylvania reported unpaid restitution of 

$638 million. In Los Angeles County, the fines, 

forfeitures and assessments related to 8,000 

complaints filed each week for failure to appear 

exceeded $75 million in a single year. Finally, in 

just one federal district in New York (southern 

region), more than $270 million was owed for 

criminal debts (U.S. Department of Justice, 2014). 

10. Concern about this motivation prompted 

the Conference of State Court Administrators 

(n.d.) to assert that “[i]t is axiomatic that the core 

functions of our government are supported from 

basic and general tax revenues. Government 

exists and operates for the common good based 

upon a common will to be governed, and the 

expense thereof is borne by general taxation of 

the governed.” 

11. African-Americans were 68 percent less likely 

to have their cases dismissed by the court, at least 

50 percent more likely to have their cases lead to 

an arrest warrant, and accounted for 92 percent of 

cases in which the court issued an arrest warrant 

(U.S. Department of Justice, 2015). 

12. These are in conflict to the extent that officers’ 

advocacy cannot comfortably coexist with their 

role as disciplinarians. 

13. This is so despite a series of Supreme Court 

rulings to the contrary: Bearden v. Georgia, 461 

U.S. 660 (1983); Frazier v. Jordan, 457 F.2d 726 (5th 

Cir. 1972); Tate v. Short, 401 U.S. 395 (1971); and 

Williams v. Illinois, 399 U.S. 235 (1970). 

14. In Franklin County, Ohio, for instance, the 

payment plan fee was $25; in the Orleans district 

in Louisiana, it was $100 (Bannon, Nagrecha and 

Diller, 2010). 

15. Economic sanctions had once been criticized 

because they did not include penalties for 

nonpayment (Petersilia and Turner, 1993; Langan, 

1994; Wheeler et al., 1990). 
18 | New Thinking in Community Corrections 

 

 

 

16. In California, Florida, Louisiana, Michigan, 

North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Texas and Virginia, 

driver’s licenses are suspended if people fail to 

make CJFO payments (Bannon, Nagrecha and 

Diller, 2010). 

17. In seven of the 15 states that Bannon and 

colleagues (2010) studied, CJFOs must be paid off 

before people regain their right to vote. According 

to Meredith and Morse (2015), southern states are 

almost three times more likely than non-southern 

states to disenfranchise people because of CJFOs 

(40 percent compared to 14 percent). 

18. Case No. 4:15-cv-253, U.S. District Court, 

Eastern District of Missouri. 

19. “If a State determines a fine or restitution to 

be the appropriate and adequate penalty for the 

crime, it may not thereafter imprison a person 

solely because he lacked the resources to pay 

it. Williams v. Illinois, 399 U.S. 235; Tate v. Short, 

401 U.S. 395. If the probationer has willfully 

refused to pay the fine or restitution when he 

has the resources to pay or has failed to make 

sufficient bona fide efforts to seek employment 

or borrow money to pay, the State is justified in 

using imprisonment as a sanction to enforce 

collection. But if the probationer has made all 

reasonable bona fide efforts to pay the fine and 

yet cannot do so through no fault of his own, it 

is fundamentally unfair to revoke probation 

automatically without considering whether 

adequate alternative methods of punishing the 

probationer are available to meet the State’s 

interest in punishment and deterrence.” 461 

U.S. 660-661, http://supreme.justia.com/cases/ 

federal/us/461/660. 

20. The federal statute, 18 U.S. Code § 3663A, 

“Mandatory restitution to victims of certain 

crimes,” lists the following offenses as requiring 

mandatory restitution: crimes of violence, 

property offenses (including offenses committed 

by fraud or deceit), offenses related to tampering 

with consumer products, and offenses relating 

to the theft of medical products. Mandatory 

restitution bars judges from considering a 

defendant’s ability to pay when determining 

restitution. 

21. Collection rates are hampered by people’s 

inability to pay, difficulty in locating people over 

time, and age of the debt. 

22. See Vera Institute of Justice (1988) for a full 

explanation of how this works. 

23. The U.S. does have some experience with 

day-fines. During the 1980s and 1990s when 

some in the criminal justice community 

sought alternative sanctions to incarceration, 

several initiatives were launched to explore 

the viability of proportional fines. The results 

were largely promising. A RAND study of dayfines in Arizona’s Maricopa County focused on 

people convicted of felonies “with low need for 

supervision and treatment.” It found that dayfines successfully diverted people from standard 

“supervision probation” and increased payment 
Shackled to Debt: Criminal Justice Financial Obligations and the Barriers to Re-entry They Create | 19 

 

 

 

 

without negative consequences in arrests and 

technical violations (Turner and Greene, 1999). 

Another study of the efficacy of day-fines in lowlevel courts in Milwaukee and Staten Island found 

similarly positive results (Greene and Worzella, 

1992). In sum, these valuable experiences, drawn 

from the European context and in parts of the U.S. 

as well, provide reasons to be optimistic as they 

indicate that by taking both offense severity and 

ability to pay into account, the day-fine model 

or an equivalent could help to address the most 

pressing concerns regarding our current system 

of CJFOs. 

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Author Note 

Karin D. Martin is Assistant Professor of Public 

Management at John Jay College of Criminal 

Justice and The Graduate Center, City University 

of New York. 

Sandra Susan Smith is Assistant Professor of 

Sociology at the University of California, Berkeley. 

Wendy Still is the Chief Probation Officer in 

Alameda County, California. 

This report was prepared for Harvard Kennedy 

School’s Executive Session on Community 

Corrections, 2013 to 2016. We thank members 

of the Session for constructive comments 

and suggestions. We also thank Jasper Frank 

and Kendra Bradner for very helpful research 

assistance. Please direct correspondence to Karin 

Martin (kamartin@jjay.cuny.edu) and Sandra 

Smith (sandra_smith@berkeley.edu). 
NCJ 249976

Members of the Executive Session on Community Corrections

Marc Levin, Policy Director, Right on Crime; 

Director, Center for Effective Justice, Texas 

Public Policy Foundation

Glenn E. Martin, President and Founder, 

JustLeadershipUSA

Anne Milgram, Senior Fellow, New York 

University School of Law

Jason Myers, Sheriff, Marion County 

Sheriff’s Office

Michael Nail, Commissioner, Georgia 

Department of Community Supervision

James Pugel, Chief Deputy Sheriff, 

Washington King County Sheriff’s 

Department

Steven Raphael, Professor, Goldman 

School of Public Policy, University of 

California, Berkeley

Nancy Rodriguez, Director, National 

Institute of Justice

Vincent N. Schiraldi, Senior Research 

Fellow, Program in Criminal Justice Policy 

and Management, Harvard Kennedy School

Sandra Susan Smith, Associate Professor, 

Department of Sociology, University of 

California, Berkeley

Amy Solomon, Director of Policy, Office 

of Justice Programs, U.S. Department 

of Justice; Executive Director, Federal 

Interagency Reentry Council

Wendy S. Still, Chief Probation Officer, 

Alameda County, California

John Tilley, Secretary, Kentucky Justice 

and Public Safety Cabinet

Steven W. Tompkins, Sheriff, 

Massachusetts Suffolk County Sheriff’s 

Department

Harold Dean Trulear, Director, Healing 

Communities; Associate Professor of 

Applied Theology, Howard University School 

of Divinity

Vesla Weaver, Assistant Professor of 

African American Studies and Political 

Science, Yale University, Institution for 

Social and Policy Studies

Bruce Western, Faculty Chair, Program in 

Criminal Justice Policy and Management, 

Harvard Kennedy School; Daniel and 

Florence Guggenheim Professor of Criminal 

Justice, Harvard University

John Wetzel, Secretary of Corrections, 

Pennsylvania Department of Corrections

Ana Yáñez-Correa, Program Officer for 

Criminal Justice, Public Welfare Foundation

Molly Baldwin, Founder and CEO, Roca, Inc.

Kendra Bradner (Facilitator), Project 

Coordinator, Program in Criminal Justice 

Policy and Management, Harvard Kennedy 

School

Barbara Broderick, Chief Probation Officer, 

Maricopa County Probation Adult Probation 

Department

Douglas Burris, Chief Probation Officer, 

United States District Court, The Eastern 

District of Missouri, Probation

John Chisholm, District Attorney, 

Milwaukee County District Attorney’s Office

George Gascón, District Attorney, San 

Francisco District Attorney’s Office

Adam Gelb, Director, Public Safety 

Performance Project, The Pew Charitable 

Trusts

Susan Herman, Deputy Commissioner for 

Collaborative Policing, New York City Police 

Department

Michael Jacobson, Director, Institute for 

State and Local Governance; Professor, 

Sociology Department, Graduate Center, 

City University of New York

Sharon Keller, Presiding Judge, Texas 

Court of Criminal Appeals

U.S. Department of Justice

Office of Justice Programs

National Institute of Justice

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