fines are only a punishment for the poor

A comprehensive bill died in 2015 and 2016 in the Washington Senate because of fiscal concerns (erroneous data to persuade legislators) and ideological differences (such as the view that people are choosing not to pay or interest is an incentive to payment or LFOs hold defendants accountable). Yeah, so that runs counter to all of our notions - a lot of this runs counter to our notions of justice!WATKINS:Paying for a public defender, for example.HARRIS:Exactly. I may be required to impose it. So I argue that we don't need an additional fine or fee at the felony level for individuals. Finally, evolving standards of decency will require the Court to prohibit many modern punishments that didnt exist in the eighteenth century, like solitary confinement or death-in-prison sentences for children or the mentally ill. For progressives, the Constitution must evolve and be interpreted so that the rights of people who are less favored, less protected, and less influential are not sacrificed to serve the interests of the powerful and the popular. Third, does the Cruel and Unusual Punishments Clause prohibit the death penalty? Probation and supervision (20 states). This amendment prohibits the federal government from imposing unduly harsh penalties on criminal defendants, either as the price for . Smaller things, not just court and post, but other ways that the justice system is profiting off of individuals. But in reality, the word unusual in the Eighth Amendment did not originally mean rare it meant contrary to long usage, or new. A punishment is cruel and unusual if it is cruel in light of long usage that is, cruel in comparison to longstanding prior practice or tradition. . Feierman shared that E.B. They have enough punishment at that level. So in general, I refer to these as monetary sanctions, or legal financial obligations. I don't think I really realized the long-term impact it had on those defendants because the focus was always on avoiding jail, trying to get the charges reduced. Court clerks and superior courts can charge an annual collection fee of $100 per year. It just creates these huge barriers, and it's ironic, because the state policy makers that set these laws, this isn't a collateral consequence. and that this kind of activity was actually making it harder for them to gain the publics trust. The Ferguson case is now in the settlement phase. "We need to sincerely start from scratch and think through all of the fiscal barriers for individuals that prolong their punishment.". "I think people are still just using a different color crayon to color within the lines, and we're not yet erasing the lines," Harris explains. In response to a growing national concern over LFO issues, the DOJ convened, on December 2, 2015, a diverse group of court administrators, judges, lawmakers, affected individuals, and others. They make a paymentparticularly because of the interest, and hopefully this will change in the next couple years, we'll see itbut particularly because of the interest and the additional surcharge for collections, people say, "I make a $20 payment. Next, Hirsch shared that they tried to take a step back and did a schoolhouse rockwho touches how an assessment becomes law? They found all the different stakeholders that were involved in the process. I challenge you to find any municipal or county clerk that can detail this out for you, because I don't think the local jurisdictions know what's happening.WATKINS:I mean, it stands to reason that if you're trying to collect money from a lot of people who don't have very much to begin with, you're probably going to spend a fair bit going after them and not get much in return, no?HARRIS:Right, and I don't have the numbers right in front of me, but the average payment amounts are very little: under $30 per open account annually, in many jurisdictions in the state of Washington. These directly create a two-tier system of justice by punishing those who are unable to pay with additional costs such as interest and penalties. He cites bail bond corporations, which charge high fees and interest, and private supervision and collection companies, which charge additional fees and often rely on arrest warrants to secure payment. (4) Some new punishment practices, such as lethal injection or long-term solitary confinement, appear to pose a risk of excessive physical or mental pain. So there's a direct relationship to how this debt can impact negatively people's ability to access employment. It argues that the Constitution should be interpreted in accordance with its original public meaning, and it demonstrates what effect such an interpretation would have in the real world. But once we get beyond these areas of agreement, there are many areas of passionate disagreement concerning the meaning and application of the Cruel and Unusual Punishments Clause: First and foremost, what standard should the Court use in deciding whether a punishment is unconstitutionally cruel? At that rate, the victim cannot be compensated for 25 years. Diversion programs (22 states). The Illinois report proposes four legislative actions and draft language: a civil assessment act with all assessments, an expansion of the fee waiver provision, a criminal and traffic assessment act similar to the civil one proposed, and a new criminal fee waiver provision. Chiraag Bains explained that, shortly after Michael Brown was shot on August 19, 2014, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) opened two investigations into the police department of Ferguson: one into Michael Browns shooting and a second one, covered in this webinar, into the practices of the police department. Such practices have often been favored over policies such as preserving affordable housing or providing health services to address the problem of poverty. But others would see the several $100 fine as being a huge amount and a severe punishment. JLC is finding that LFOs undermine the goal of the juvenile justice system of giving young people a second chance. Examples are 4.75 percent interest (Florida), 7 percent interest (Georgia), 12 percent interest (Washington), a 15 percent penalty on unpaid balances and a 30 percent collection fee (Illinois), and a 19 percent collection fee for delinquent payments and a $35 fee (Arizona). The Washington legislature has passed two pieces of legislation with provisional restoration of voting rights (House Bill 1517) and more interest relief options (Senate Bill 5423). Officials can work with impacted populations on everything from parking tickets to payment plans to utility fines and fees. What does it mean for a punishment to be cruel and unusual? If youve ever had an encounter with the criminal justice system, chances are it came with a price tag. Today's penalties are far less severe: fines, community penalties, imprisonment. There needs to be a nexus between an assessment and its rationale. Propose policy and legislative change. In this respect, the Eighth Amendment does not merely prohibit barbaric punishments; it also bars disproportionate penalties. The United States Supreme Court in Bearden v. WATKINS:That was Washington State municipal court judge Linda Edmonds. EdmondsMunicipal Court Judge Linda Coburn of Washington State. Ooops. Dr. Harris has also found other courts nationally that are more restorative and allow people to pay off their debt by attending programs that lead to better reintegration into their community. WATKINS:You're able to integrate into it a given person's financial ability?COBURN:Yes, so if somebody comes before me and they tell me that they're, for example, on state assistance. Prior to that law, there was a requirement that courts consider ability to pay before imposing costs, but the law was read to where they consider your current and future ability to pay. The meaning is that the upper class (rich) can afford to pay the fine, and will often continue to do the illegal behavior. These individuals included lawyers, other professionals, family members, and young people with experience in the juvenile justice system. Major criminal justice reforms such as removing mandatory fines, providing relief for poor defendants and assessing the ability to pay would go far in correcting a criminal justice system that punishes low-income people, a Rutgers University-New Brunswick study finds. There are no options for relief from restitution. The views expressed in this article are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the positions or policies of the American Bar Association, the Section of Litigation, this committee, or the employer(s) of the author(s). NIJ's "Five Things About Deterrence" summarizes a large body of research related to deterrence of crime into five points. They are funded by the local jurisdictions. These protections were not added until after the Constitution was ratified. Our VP of outreach is Emma Dayton. This saying (not in the original game) was made into a Facebook meme by Leftist Gamer Memes on October 17, 2020. In one county in Washington, for example, over $750 million is outstanding, but the average annual payment is $39 (again, the first $100 go to the collection fee). What Can You Do? Neither the Constitutions Framers nor the document they created was flawless. Edmonds Municipal Court Judge Linda Coburn in Washington State believes the system of "legal financial obligations" has grown so complex, judges and attorneys often fail to appreciate the burden they represent. dominant punishment for petty offenses and economic crimes.8 Today, fines are often the sole or primary form of punishment . Nick Allen presented the negative consequences that stem from the imposition of LFOs in Washington and nationally. And both of those are supposed to be punitive, related to your punishment. And so even though you had clients who want to please the court and say, "I can make payments of $50 a month or $25 a month," you don't necessarily really understand in their circumstances what they're giving up in order to do that, or how long it's going to take them to actually pay off the LFOs and what implications that that may mean.WATKINS: What would you say then that you are understanding now better, and how did you come to that understanding? As these debates demonstrate, the Cruel and Unusual Punishments Clause clearly prohibits barbaric methods of punishment. We do know some things about the history of the phrase cruel and unusual punishments. In 1689 a full century before the ratification of the United States Constitution England adopted a Bill of Rights that prohibited cruell and unusuall punishments. In 1776, George Mason included a prohibition of cruel and unusual punishments in the Declaration of Rights he drafted for the Commonwealth of Virginia. Explore our new 15-unit high school curriculum. Many court systems rely on this money to fund their own operations, and often contract private collection agencies. Our director of design is Samiha Amin Meah. I also am excited to see, in both Ginsburgs and Thomas's decisions, that they linked excessive forfeitures with the Black Codes and convict leasing programs. One of the most serious problems was that the court issued municipal arrest warrants for missed appearances. The DOJ released a Dear Colleague letter on March 14, 2016, clarifying that, based on Bearden v. Georgia, courts must determine whether a person can pay before imprisoning them for fines. carceration, is on the upswing: in 1991, only a tenth of felons 8 Lawrence M. Friedman, A History of American Law 61 (Simon & Schuster 2d ed 1985 . One item that is missing is national, systematic court data that would allow us to assess who is being sentenced, who is paying what, and what is the amount outstanding. All Rights Reserved. If it fell out of usage for multiple generations, however, it might become cruel and unusual. It will be at your fingertips to really understand, if this is the crime, then what are the LFOs that could be associated with that crime, or must be associated with that crime? Open Privacy Options In the wake of a constitutional amendment to provide automatic restoration, the Florida legislature proposed a new system in SB 7066, aimed at . And we have some leaders that are making changes. For every nine people executed, one innocent person has been exonerated. We are then lost and undone. Largely as a result of these objections, the Constitution was amended to prohibit cruel and unusual punishments. Thus, you must scale the amounts so that the punishment is equal and of the same harshness. For progressives, the constitutionality of a particular punishment cannot be evaluated in the abstract. But there are a few buckets; so the first bucket is restitution, and that's a financial sentence that people are given after conviction. If fines are supposed to have anything to do with making a person experience consequences for their crime, whether retributive consequences or rehabilitative consequences, then punishments are failing their stated purpose and being applied grossly unequally. The United Nations special rapporteur on extreme poverty, Philip Alston, highlighted the practice during a recent visit to the country. If a court were to find that their effect is significantly harsher than the longstanding punishment practices they have replaced, it could appropriately find them cruel and unusual. Washington, with the 1783 bill, now set a standard for indigents, in particularly with regards to mental illness that people cannot have discretionary fees imposed. And if that happens, people will have warrants put out for their arrest, and they can be re-incarcerated. There must be a relationship between an assessment and access to the courts because, if we keep increasing assessments, we could be impeding access and creating a barrier to reentry. (2) Does the Cruel and Unusual Punishments Clause only prohibit barbaric methods of punishment, or does it also prohibit punishments that are disproportionate to the offense? And fines are associated with a particular type of offense. During the program, the panelists highlighted the new findings from Illinois, Ferguson, and Washington to give specific examples of LFOs and their effects. The greatness of our Constitution and America itself is dependent on how the Constitution is interpreted to ensure that all people are treated equally and fairly and have the same opportunity to exercise the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness as the exclusive group of men who authored the Constitution. Burr ran for governor of New York and Hamilton widely considered the most influential founding father of the United States opposed his candidacy, making public remarks that Burr found insulting. Can you waive it? So when I was doing my research, I saw judges ask about women's manicures. In Ferguson, African Americans were 68 percent less likely to have their cases dismissed, more likely to have cases last longer and have more court encounters, and 50 percent more likely to have an arrest warrant issued against them. The Eighth Amendment to the United States Constitution states: Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted. This amendment prohibits the federal government from imposing unduly harsh penalties on criminal defendants, either as the price for obtaining pretrial release or as punishment for crime after conviction. Human Rights Watch is a 501(C)(3)nonprofit registered in the US under EIN: 13-2875808. One of the most significant of these new powers was the power to create federal crimes and to punish those who committed them. You can be charged for your daily stay in a jail or prison. I need to make sure that I get paid. For progressives, this is an unacceptably high rate of error: The probability that an innocent person has been or will be executed offends our standards of decency, and renders the death penalty cruel and unusual punishment that violates the Eighth Amendment. Spotlight on Restitution LFOs The state courts denied his petition for habeas corpus. All rights reserved. . Alexes Harris, the second guest of the episode, is a professor of sociology at the University of Washington and the author of the 2016 book, A Pound of Flesh: Monetary Sanctions as Punishment for the Poor, a detailed study of fines and fees practices in Washington State. How Do LFOs Affect People Who Are Unable to Pay? This essay concerns the original meaning of the Cruel and Unusual Punishments Clause. So this is already, in general, disproportionally a marginalized population, and then we saddle them with a felony conviction, which has a host of consequences, and in addition to the financial debt. [deleted] 2 yr. ago Just the price tag really. The certainty of being caught is a vastly more powerful deterrent than the punishment. Even if determined indigent, the defendant may have to pay a fee for counsel or reimburse counsel expenses later. Our theme music is by Michael Aharon at quivernyc.com, and our show's founder is Rob Wolf. 100% of our general fund is going to be towards criminal justice cost. There is not time or space here to answer all these questions, but the essays that follow will demonstrate differing ways of approaching several of them. These are fees on top of the base charges, and they range from 0 to 83 percent. So we had the Bearden v. Georgia case, which established the concept of willful nonpayment, that people could not be incarcerated solely for their inability to make payments. Alameda County in California found no benefit to the county of juvenile courts fees, which helped the county pass a moratorium on these fees. You pay to enter into a review, a fiscal review. The maximum fine allowed in both magistrates' courts and the Crown Court is unlimited (the maximum in magistrates' court for offences committed before 12 March 2015 is 5,000). I think we need to sincerely start from scratch and think through and map out all of the fiscal barriers for individuals that prolong their punishment and re-create a system that allows people to be treated as human, that allows them to be successful and not have these financial hurdles for the rest of their lives.WATKINS:Well, that sounds like a pretty admirable goal. Throughout its history, the Court has ruled that certain practices are unconstitutional or indecent even when such practices were popular. A famous piece of literature? . Technical support is from the resonant Bill Harkins. . And so what I would argue at those levels is that we need to have some sort of graduated sanction. This is not considered an LFO, so they collect this fee before paying out on the underlying LFO, including the restitution. This has been new thinking from the Center for Court Innovation. The report from this task force, Illinois Court Assessments (June 1, 2016), covers the circuit courts but not the administrative and municipal courts. Ferguson, Missouri. You have to pay to apply to have a public defender. So if I'm speeding and I know I'm going to get a ticket, and I get that ticket, I might not speed again, because I don't want to pay that fine. These fines range from an undefined amount (Delaware) to $500,000 (Kansas). . And so I'm hoping this can help us create more momentum to talk about these key issues, and thinking through how, if we really want to be a just society like we claim we are, how can we hold people who violate the law accountable in a way in which they can meet that accountability, repent, and move forward with their lives to be productive and successful, happy citizens? In 1791, this same prohibition became the central component of the Eighth Amendment to the United States Constitution. And if you do, how many packs are you smoking a month?" (4) Are some modern methods of punishment such as the extended use of solitary confinement, or the use of a three-drug cocktail to execute offenders sufficiently barbaric to violate the Eighth Amendment? Share this via Email Jessica Feierman explained how the Juvenile Law Center kept hearing stories from its clients about all the different costs, fines, and fees involved, so the center took the time to do a 50-state statutory review to get a sense of the problem nationally and to look at what can be done. Spotlight on the Juvenile Justice System In other counties, anyone who owed any debt would regularly have warrants put out for their arrest, and they'd be incarcerated for up to 60 days.WATKINS:So it's not uncommon, then, for people to end up in jail for being unable to meet their debts, in this case, a debt to the court system?HARRIS:No, it's not uncommon at all. . She is currently heading up a multi-year research project comparing those practices across eight states. Defendants are sometimes required to pay a fee to expunge their records; other times, they are not allowed to seek expungement until they have paid off other costs. . Do you see that as having a significant impact?HARRIS:Oh, I'm hopeful it will have a significant impact. The debates that occurred while the states were deciding whether to ratify the Constitution shed some light on the meaning of the Cruel and Unusual Punishments Clause, because they show why many people thought this Clause was needed. WATKINS:We always hear this phrase "fines and fees" together. Legally, they can't work, children, up to certain ages, so it does not make sense to impose a debt on them. That is a change that just took place last year in Washington State?COBURN:Yes, it went into effect in June of 2018. WATKINS:That's a recent law, right? JLC reached out especially to families to collect stories about what happens to young people and their families as a result of LFOs. Work with community groups to educate the public. A life sentence for a parking violation, for example, would not violate the Constitution. According to a document OSHA provided to TIME, Dollar General received $16 million in initial penalties since 2017 but has only paid $3.9 million so far and owes a balance of $631,666. Clause prohibits imposing overly burdensome fines on the poor, . He describes how cities are jailing or fining the poorest people for offenses rooted in their homeless status, saying he observed aggressive enforcement of this kind in Los Angeles and San Francisco. Alston also addresses the money bail system, used in almost every US state, which requires people to pay to secure their release from jail prior to trial. Im Matt Watkins. The best way to understand this is to run through those four questions once again, using our new understanding of the original meaning of the Clause: (1) The appropriate benchmark for determining whether a punishment is cruel and unusual is neither the subjective feelings of the current Supreme Court nor the outdated standards of 1791. The first LFO was for $1,600 and is now close to $3,500 because of interest. . And then my question is, "How long do people have to express their remorse for what they've done?"

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