Did You Know that Some States Force Juveniles to Pay for their own Incarceration?
By: Shoshana Kaufman
Tags: Criminal Justice System, Inequality, Poverty, Injustice, Social Justice

Did You Know that Some States Force Juveniles to Pay for their own Incarceration?

It’s a systemic problem that condemns too many young people or their families to lifelong debt.

Photo by Paweł Czerwiński on Unsplash

Imagine that your son is charged with an offense such as stealing from a local convenience store. Or that your daughter is arrested for assault. Maybe your child is innocent of the crime she is charged with. Maybe it’s your son’s first offense.

Now imagine that you cannot afford to pay a fine if she is found guilty or even for an attorney to defend your youngster. Maybe your family suffers from unemployment or are just members of the working poor. Even paying ten dollars would stretch your budget if you have trouble paying for food or clothing, which many families today do. Yes, you would be entitled to a court-appointed defense attorney. But while you wait for a possibly long and drawn-out process to determine if your family qualifies for legal aid, you could be racking up debt for a court-appointed attorney’s advocacy, for out-of-home placement for your child, including foster placement, and any number of other costs typically involved with charging a juvenile offender.

And don’t forget, your child may be completely innocent of the crime he has been charged with. And the family has to pay the debt and can even be arrested or imprisoned for nonpayment.

It’s mind boggling.

My husband is the rabbi of a congregation in Michigan. The synagogue’s anti-racist book club recently invited a local activist to speak to our group about the problem of juvenile offenders who are forced to pay for their own expenses incurred from being charged with crimes, whether or not they are guilty of the crimes. In Michigan, each county decides how it will manage court costs. Some counties pay court fees for defendants, and some do not. If a child is charged with a crime in one of the nonpaying counties, then costs must be covered by the family. These costs may include fines, hotel charges, attorney fees, psychological assessment fees, charges for clothing or food provided during incarceration, medical and dental fees for treatments during incarceration, or even probation supervision.

If a family or offender cannot afford to pay the fees, their wages or unemployment payments can be garnished. Even worse, a young offender may decide to agree to a plea bargain or plead guilty to a crime he or she did not commit, just because he or she can’t afford the incarceration or court fees.

Needless to say, poor people are disproportionally affected by these outrageous fees. And people of color are even more disproportionally represented in these shockingly unjust practices.

Photo by Karsten Winegeart on Unsplash

The only word I can think of to describe this situation is evil. And it’s a peculiarly American form of evil. Only in America are poor people, people whose ancestors were enslaved, forced into a form of re-enslavement for involvement in the justice system. It is a form of class and race-based oppression. It is the result of an unjust, unbalanced, and poorly-regulated system that is rarely called to account in the court of public opinion.

I had no idea these legal abominations existed until I attended a virtual book club meeting.

As a Canadian, it is very difficult for me to wrap my head around such an outrageously unjust system. And around the fact that living in one county rather than another decides whether or not someone has to pay for court costs when charged with a crime.

And these fees are unique to the juvenile court system. Adult defendants do not have to cover these costs.

Why are counties allowed to do this?

It would make sense if state governments simply outlawed these fees. Several states have done so, including California and Washington State. A proposal is being drafted for Governor Gretchen Whitmer to impose a moratorium on these fees for the duration of the pandemic. If she can do that, why can’t she pass a law that makes such blatant injustices illegal?

A society cannot thrive where such injustices abound. People who are continually beaten down, shamed, and punished for being poor become angry and resentful. They lash out. And society has to pay the price of violence that circles out from its source.

If you don’t give people hope, then they have nothing to lose.

Nickeling and diming poor families whose children have gotten into trouble creates enormous costs for society down the road. The cost of imprisoning one person for a year in the United States is $31,000.00. It would be much cheaper to pay the cost of counselling juvenile offenders than to saddle their families with debt that prevents them from healing and being rehabilitated.

The United States has the highest rate of incarceration in the entire world. It’s a business and an institution. It encourages people to make money from other people’s suffering.

It’s just plain wrong. And it’s counter-productive.

When juvenile offenders and their families are saddled with debt, they are prevented from getting ahead. And when people cannot get ahead and pay their own way, then society pays one way or another.