How Tennessee judges look at defendants' ability to pay fees and fines

By The Sycamore Institute

Fees and fines are an important part of Tennessee’s criminal justice system – both to punish criminal acts and fund an essential government function. This report dives deeper into one item on our list of potential policy options to address the side-effects of fees, fines, and other legal financial obligations (LFOs). Specifically, it looks at how a person’s ability to pay fees and fines factors into what they ultimately owe and highlights several options for state-level policy change. Prior reports walk through the 360+ LFOs people can accrue in the state’s criminal justice system, their effects on different stakeholders, the revenue they generate for our state and local governments, and opportunities to improve data collection. Background People can accrue a multitude of fees and fines as they move through Tennessee’s criminal justice system (Figure 1). The amounts owed depend on the offense, the actors involved, and a case’s ultimate outcome, but they can add up quickly. (1) While publicly available data is limited, it is not unusual for total debts to reach several thousand dollars or more. (2) KEY TAKEAWAYS • The effect that fees, fines, and other legal financial obligations have on people required to pay them (and the justice system overall) largely depends on their ability to pay them. • A patchwork of provisions in Tennessee code offers wide flexibility but little consistency in how courts should address defendants’ ability to pay fees and fines. • Judges across the state vary in when and how they determine a defendant’s ability to pay. • The judicial discretion baked into current law recognizes that each case is unique but can also generate unequal outcomes that diverge by jurisdiction and/or defendants’ economic status. • Options to address these challenges include gathering better data on current practices and making state law more consistent. Policymakers could also consider graduated fines. 

Nashville: Sycamore Institute, 2021. 21p.