UW News

June 6, 2018

Washington state Supreme Court takes up court-fee reform, considers UW data at sold-out Wednesday symposium

UW News

Monetary sanctions disproportionately affect the poor and people of color. A Washington State Supreme Court symposium will discuss the issue of legal financial obligations, with new data from the University of Washington.

Monetary sanctions disproportionately affect the poor and people of color. A Washington State Supreme Court symposium will discuss the issue of legal financial obligations, with new data from the University of Washington.

 

African-Americans in Washington state are 2.3 times more likely than whites to be sentenced to fines and fees, and carry about three times the debt in unpaid monetary sanctions.

In all, said University of Washington sociology professor Alexes Harris, legal financial obligations represented nearly $2.5 billion in debt in Washington in 2014, the most recent year for which statistics are available. But several states, including Washington, are starting to pursue solutions to a system that disproportionately affects the poor and people of color, and allows the private sector, such as bail bonds businesses, to profit.

Harris, who is leading a national study of LFOs, will present this and other new data today to the annual symposium of the Washington State Supreme Court’s Minority and Justice Commission. This year’s event focuses exclusively on the current state of the fines and fees system, as well as solutions to debt and inequity. Harris helped organize the symposium, which is followed by a UW Department of Sociology conference on LFOs.

The symposium runs from  9 a.m. to noon in Sullivan Hall at Seattle University. The free, public event is at capacity but will be livestreamed on TVW.

“We’re highlighting the ways the system of justice perpetuates inequality in society,” Harris said. “We as citizens choose to impose the costs of this system on individuals. But we all benefit from the systems of justice and law enforcement – they’re a public good, and poor people shouldn’t carry the burden of the public good.”

Alexes Harris

Alexes Harris

State and local governments impose legal financial obligations such as fines, court fees, restitution, surcharges and interest at every level of the justice system, from a traffic ticket to a felony conviction, and include lesser-known charges to defendants, such as the cost of a jury. But for many people, the accrued cost becomes overwhelming, if not . Viewed per capita, African-Americans are sentenced to $15 in state Superior Court fees on average per adult, compared to $6.59 for whites in Washington.

During the 2018 legislative session, Washington lawmakers passed a bill to, among other things, lift some cost obligations from those who qualify as “indigent,” such as the homeless and the mentally ill, and to revamp some of the penalties for those who are unable to pay. The law is scheduled to go into effect this week.

It’s a step forward, Harris said, but much remains to be done in order to address racial and economic inequities. Adjusting sanctions based on a person’s ability to pay and the severity of the offense is one solution, she said. Another is a “bench card” – a laminated card for judges that provides information on the new state law as it pertains to fines and fees. The card, developed by Columbia Legal Services with the Minority and Justice Commission, was provided to court decision-makers at today’s conference.

Among the other solution-oriented steps to be discussed Wednesday is a new LFO Calculator tool, a product of the Minority and Justice Commission’s partnership with Microsoft with support of the Department of Justice’s Bureau of Justice Administration grant. The online calculator is designed to be used by the courts to tally up possible court costs and also calculate a defendant’s income and other resources to determine a monetary sentence.

The effort to find alternatives isn’t an attempt to eliminate the penalty, but rather an opportunity to examine the various types of sentences people receive and to arrive at a realistic and achievable set of sanctions, Harris said.

“[We should] scale fines and fees so that they’re fair and people are punished, but do it in a way that doesn’t further exacerbate inequality in society,” she said.

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More information on the symposium is available here. For information on the LFO study, contact Harris at yharris@uw.edu.

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