by Phil Bowen

This data review is a quantitative analysis of Citizens Advice data for clients who faced fine arrears between 2019 and 2023. It sits within our research project looking at the impact of court fines on people on low incomes, alongside our report, 'Where the hell am I going to get that money from?: The impact of court fines on people on low incomes'. It specifically seeks answers to the following questions: How has the court fine been used over the past five years?; Which offences do people get fined for?; Who gets fined and what are the demographics of those individuals who receive fines?; And what are the outcomes associated with fines, specifically repayment rates, re-offending rates and imprisonment for fine default?

London: Centre for Justice Innovation, 2024. 37p.

by Lucy Slade

Despite court fines being the most used sentence in the English and Welsh criminal justice system, it is rare that they feature in the discussion of justice reform engaged in by policymakers, academics and the third sector. To shine a light on this important, but under examined, area of our justice system, the Centre has undertaken a research project looking specifically what is the impact of their use. It is the first of its kind to look at what ought to happen— and what actually does. As part of this project, we have reviewed the literature of court fines and financial impositions in the criminal courts of England and Wales. This is accompanied by our report, which brings together the findings of our review of publicly available data, and qualitative interviews with people in low-incomes who have received a fine.

London: Centre for Justice Innovation, 2024. 11p.

by Lucy Slade and Stephen Whitehead

Almost everyone who is convicted in a court in England and Wales leaves with a bill to pay. Yet there is a striking gap in our knowledge on the most common sentencing outcome handed down by our courts: the court fine. A new report by the Centre for Justice Innovation published today (16 May 2024) seeks to address this knowledge gap. The report is called: “Where the hell am I going to get that money from?” The impact of court fines on people on low incomes.

The research, specifically conducted during this cost of living crisis, suggest that the impacts of getting a court fine are often highly disproportionate: while better off people experience only minor hardships, such as forgoing a holiday,for a significant number of those on the lowest incomes paying their court fine pushed them deeper towards unmanageable debt, destitution and significant levels of anxiety and mental anguish.

The research highlights that, contrary to the sentencing objectives of the court fine, the financial impact of fines and charges are not experienced equally by people with different levels of means. The research also found major gaps on the data collected, especially on the socio-economic status of those who are fined, meaning there is not a clear picture of who gets fined, who pays and who doesn’t (and why).

The research. The research is a comprehensive study based on a wide range of sources including interviews with 56 people with experience of fines who live on a low income; a literature review; analysis of public data on court fines; and of Citizens Advice data for clients who faced fine arrears between 2019 and 2023; and focus groups with 14 magistrates.

Findings from the data review:

• Men received the majority of fines (2,534,714, 64%), with women receiving 944,547 (24%), and a further 474,557 fines issued where sex was not recorded (12%). This is in keeping with the preponderance of men in the sentencing and the criminal justice caseload more generally.

• Women were proportionally more likely to receive fines than men (85% compared with 73%), in part, because they are more likely to commit the less serious offences, which result in a fine.

• Of the ten offences for which fines are most often issued, women receive the majority of fines for only one of these, TV licence evasion, where they represent three quarters of people whose gender is recorded.

Key findings

Almost everyone who is convicted of a crime in a court in England and Wales leaves with a bill to pay. Over 75% of people convicted each year are sentenced to a fine. Yet while many of the offences for which fines are given are deemed “minor,” the research suggests that, for people on low incomes, the impact of fines is anything but.

• A large number of the offences for which court fines are imposed are strongly linked to people’s pre-existing poverty, such as TV licence evasion.

• Many of the 56 interviewees reported that the financial burdens placed on them by the court had pushed them further into debt, with some pushed into destitution and into further offending to pay off the court fine.

• For some, the financial burdens took a severe toll on their mental and physical health, particularly where they faced prolonged payment periods in a never-ending cycle of payments.

• While fine amount

  • are meant to be determined by an individual’s financial circumstances, this system did not seem to work effectively in practice.

  • The imposition of other non means-tested financial charges alongside the fine, such as prosecution costs, often pushed the total amount owed to the court up from something affordable to an amount that felt impossible to pay in the time allowed.

  • Court fine enforcement action (which is subject to less regulation than commercial credit recovery), particularly the threat of bailiffs, added further financial and wellbeing strains, especially for those already struggling to make insufficient household budgets last.

  • Magistrates suggested that they often felt their hands were tied, leaving them to sentence people on low incomes to fines, the magistrates knew they could not pay.

  • Many interviewees felt that a fine was, in theory, an appropriate punishment for the offence they committed, but the confusing processes of the current system often meant that the total amount they eventually needed to pay was seen as excessive

London: The Centre for Justice Innovation, 2024, 41p.

By Michelle S. Phelps

Between 1980 and 2007, probation rates in the United States skyrocketed alongside imprisonment rates; since 2007, both forms of criminal justice control have declined in use. Although a large literature in criminology and related fields has explored the causes and consequences of mass incarceration, very little research has explored the parallel rise of mass probation. This review takes stock of our knowledge of probation in the United States. In the first section, I trace the expansion of probation historically, across states, and for specific demographic groups. I then summarize the characteristics of adults on probation today and what we know about probation revocation. Lastly, I review the nascent literature on the causal effects of probation for individuals, families, neighborhoods, and society. I end by discussing a plan for research and the growing movement to blunt the harms of mass supervision.

Annual Review of Criminology, Annu. Rev. Criminol. 2020. 3:261–79

By Devah Pager, Rebecca Goldstein, Helen Ho, and Bruce Western 

  Court-related fines and fees are widely levied on criminal defendants who are frequently poor and have little capacity to pay. Such financial obligations may produce a criminalization of poverty, where later court involvement results not from crime but from an inability to meet the financial burdens of the legal process. We test this hypothesis using a randomized controlled trial of court-related fee relief for misdemeanor defendants in Oklahoma County, Oklahoma. We find that relief from fees does not affect new criminal charges, convictions, or jail bookings after 12 months. However, control respondents were subject to debt collection efforts at significantly higher rates that involved new warrants, additional court debt, tax refund garnishment, and referral to a private debt collector. Despite significant efforts at debt collection among those in the control group, payments to the court totaled less than 5 percent of outstanding debt. The evidence indicates that court debt charged to indigent defendants neither caused nor deterred new crime, and the government obtained little financial benefit. Yet, fines and fees contributed to a criminalization of low-income defendants, placing them at risk of ongoing court involvement through new warrants and debt collection.

American Sociological Review, Volume 87, Issue 3, 2022.

By Lindsay Bing, Becky Pettit, Ilya Slavinski

Low-level misdemeanor and traffic violations draw tens of millions of people into local courts to pay fines and fees each year, generating billions of dollars in revenue. We examine how standardized legal fines and fees for low-level charges induce disparate treatment and result in disparate impact. Using a mixed-methods approach that incorporates administrative court records as well as interviews with criminal defendants from Texas, we find that although the majority of defendants readily pay for and conclude their case, African American, Latinx, and economically disadvantaged defendants spend disproportionate amounts of money and time resolving theirs. Analysis of criminal case records illustrates the disparate impact of monetary sanctions through the accrual of debt and time spent resolving a charge. Interviews reveal irreconcilable tensions between American ideals of equality in sentencing and the meaning and value of money and time in an increasingly unequal society.

RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences 8(2): 118–136  , 2022.

By Brittany Friedman, Alexes Harris, Beth M. Huebner, Karin D. Martin, Becky Pettit, Sarah K.S. Shannon, Bryan L. Sykes

Monetary sanctions are an integral and increasingly debated feature of the American criminal legal system. Emerging research, including that featured in this volume, offers important insight into the law governing monetary sanctions, how they are levied, and how their imposition affects inequality. Monetary sanctions are assessed for a wide range of contacts with the criminal legal system ranging from felony convictions to alleged traffic violations with important variability in law and practice across states. These differences allow for the identification of features of law, policy, and practice that differentially shape access to justice and equality before the law. Common practices undermine individuals’ rights and fuel inequality in the effects of unpaid monetary sanctions. These observations lead us to offer a number of specific recommendations to improve the administration of justice, mitigate some of the most harmful effects of monetary sanctions, and advance future research.

  RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences 8(1): 221–43, 2022

By Mary Pattillo and Gabriela Kirk

Monetary sanctions include fines, fees, restitution, surcharges, interest, and other costs imposed on people who are convicted of crimes ranging from traffic violations to violent felonies.  We analyze how people in the court system theorize about monetary sanctions with regards to four kinds of justice: constitutional, retributive, procedural, and distributive justice.  Drawing on qualitative interviews with sixty-eight people sentenced to pay monetary sanctions in Illinois, we identify five themes that illuminate how respondents think about these forms of justice: monetary sanctions are: (1) justifiable punishment, (2) impossible to pay due to poverty, (3) double punishment, (4) extortion, and (5) collected by an opaque and greedy state.  We find that for defendants in the criminal justice system, monetary sanctions serve some retributive aims, but do not align with the other three domains of justice.  We discuss the policy implications of these findings.

UCLA Criminal Justice Law Review  Volume 4, Issue 1, 2020.

By Henry M. Boies.

A study of the abnormal increase of criminals and the public burden of pauperism in the U.S. - the causes and remedies. THERE are four hundred and forty-six charitable, reformatory, and penal institutions in the State of Pennsylvania, inspected at least once each year by its Board of Public Charities. They have a wide variety of objects, methods, management, and inmates. The view which a member of this Board obtains, therefore, and the impressions he receives of pauperism and criminality are of a very general nature, inducing a consideration of the subject as a whole. Most of the literature of these subjects, on the contrary, is confined to particular and distinct phases of them. I have endeavored in this book to present this general view of the case as it appears in our country ; to emphasize the waste of human sympathy and public funds which results from what appears to be inconsiderate and misdirected methods of treatment ; to suggest not only possible improvements in these methods, but radical changes in direction ; and, finally, I have proposed a positive remedy, which, however people may disagree concerning its practicability.

New York: Putnam, 1893. 318p.