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<br />NORTH CAROLINA POVERTY RESEARCH FUND 18
<br />Court Fines and Fees: Criminalizing Poverty in North Carolina
<br />There are a lot of things you can't do. A lot of jobs you can't apply for … Lots of benefits
<br />you can't apply for. If you have a license, a driver's license that needs to be renewed, you
<br />can't renew it. So what it means is you live your entire life under a cloud.103
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<br />We interviewed a man who described how he “hid out” for ten years to avoid being arrested for court
<br />debt. In an attempt to escape sanctions, defendants sever the “bonds of conformity” (steady employment,
<br />stable housing, social relationships) that are associated with criminal desistance.104 As a result, fines and
<br />fees can foster marginalization and recidivism.
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<br />In North Carolina, the legislature has implemented new and larger fines and fees in order to raise revenue,
<br />even as it cuts court funding.105 These moves often frame defendants as “customers” and monetary
<br />sanctions as “user fees,” reinforcing a notion that the dispensation of justice is simply a commercial
<br />enterprise.106 This cheapens and diminishes the value of the courts, downplays the hardships and
<br />inequities imposed by fines and fees, and suggests that defendants (as “customers”) somehow deserve to
<br />bear the costs of “doing business.” But we all have a stake in the operation of the criminal justice system.
<br />One attorney we interviewed stated, “I’d like to see a court funded by taxpayers rather than users. I have a
<br />strong interest as a community member in the court system. I want my neighbor to have a fair trial and
<br />just sentence, and they shouldn’t have to pay for that.”107 A user fee framework allows the courts and
<br />legislators to evade broader questions about the scope and direction of the judicial department and sends a
<br />“distorted message about the real costs of enforcement” to the public.108 As the U.S. Department of
<br />Justice found in Ferguson, Missouri, and as demonstrated elsewhere, the emphasis on user fees transforms
<br />citizens into “sources of revenue.”109 “They’re searching to find something wrong,” a defendant observed.
<br />“If you dig deep enough, you’ll always find dirt.”110
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<br />Fines and fees in North Carolina are impossible to evaluate
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<br />Information on the statewide impact of fines and fees in North Carolina is scant to nonexistent. Basic
<br />measures—the number of people who owe court debt, the amount owed, the length of time it takes to
<br />discharge debt, the repayment rate—are unavailable. Data on collateral consequences such as
<br />incarceration is limited and anecdotal. As a result, fines and fees defy and escape evaluation.
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<br />Fines and fees, we’ve been told, are “all about revenue.”111 They are sold on their ability to generate funds
<br />without raising taxes, yet their net economic impact is curiously unexamined. The little evidence at hand
<br />provides reason to be skeptical. Records from Mecklenburg County, North Carolina, show that in 2009
<br />the county jailed 246 defendants with unpaid debt who had failed to update their addresses. The cost of
<br />the jail terms alone totaled more than $40,000; the county collected only $33,476.112 A study of fines and
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<br />103 Shapiro, “As Court Fees Rise, the Poor Are Paying the Price.”
<br />104 Harris, A Pound of Flesh, 73.
<br />105 Woodman, “Wait, Are You Sure You Want to Plead Guilty? North Carolina’s Bad Plan to Take Lawyers Away from Poor
<br />People.”
<br />106 “‘The only reason that the court is in operation and doing business at that point in time is because that defendant has come in
<br />and is a user of those services,’ says Michael Day, the administrator for the Allegan County Circuit Court. ‘They don't
<br />necessarily see themselves as a customer because, obviously, they're not choosing to be there. But in reality they are.’” Shapiro,
<br />“As Court Fees Rise, The Poor Are Paying the Price.”
<br />107 Mani Dexter interview with the North Carolina Poverty Research Fund, August 21, 2017.
<br />108 Logan and Wright, Mercenary Criminal Justice, 1178.
<br />109 U.S. Department of Justice, Civil Rights Division, Investigation of the Ferguson Police Department, 2.
<br />110 Harvey et al., ArchCity Defenders: Municipal Courts White Paper, 16.
<br />111 Neff, “No Mercy for Judges Who Show Mercy.”
<br />112 Bannon, Nagrecha, and Diller, Criminal Justice Debt, 26.
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