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NORTH CAROLINA POVERTY RESEARCH FUND 19 Court Fines and Fees: Criminalizing Poverty in North Carolina fees in Washington State calculated that direct expenditures (which consisted of personnel hired to collect fines and fees and the cost of mailings to defendants) came to about $16 million, while the state made about $21.6 million. However, this comparison did not include any indirect costs stemming from hearings, arrests, incarceration and the like.113 Low rates of collection—substantially less than 50% in many jurisdictions—suggest that state resources are expended chasing uncollectable fines and fees when they could be put to better use.114 North Carolina’s own Administrative Office of the Courts (AOC) has admitted that the court debts of many defendants are a lost cause. Responding to a critical state audit, the AOC defended its failure to bring in millions of dollars in outstanding fines and fees by writing off the sum as uncollectable.115 By way of explanation, the AOC director at that time observed that defendants are “among the very poorest and most destitute in the state.”116 Yet the courts, he acknowledged, continue to jail them for failure to comply—in an empty and possibly unlawful charade. We hear assertions about the state’s pressing need for the funds that fines and fees provide, but we don’t hear much about the resources required to assess, manage and collect fines and fees or the costs involved in overseeing and sanctioning defendants—never mind the broader social harms at play. Without the data to test these claims, they remain unchallenged. Maybe that’s the point. If fines and fees can’t stand on the arguments—fiscal exigency and cost efficiency—advanced in their defense, they should be recognized as purely punitive and vindictive measures directed at some of the state’s most disadvantaged citizens. History of Fines and Fees in North Carolina The massive growth of the criminal justice system in recent decades fueled steep increases in state expenditures. In the 1970s and 1980s, incarceration rates nationwide rose inexorably, driven by a “get tough on crime” mentality, mandatory sentencing, and the wars on crime and drugs. In 40 years, the number of people behind bars in the U.S. jumped 700 percent.117 The number of people incarcerated in North Carolina has grown dramatically as well. The combined prison and jail population rose from about 16,000 in 1978 to about 55,000 in 2013—an increase of 244% (Fig. 1). The prison inmate population grew so quickly in the 1980s that federal takeover due to overcrowding was imminent. The number of people under correctional supervision has almost doubled since 1985 (Fig. 2). In 2016, 57,000 people were incarcerated in state prisons or local jails, 89,000 were on probation and 9,600 were on parole.118 113 Beckett and Harris, “On Cash and Conviction: Monetary Sanctions as Misguided Policy,” 527–28. 114 Surveys have found collection rates ranging from around 50% in Virginia to well under half in Alabama to 9% in Florida. Pepin, The End of Debtors’ Prisons: Effective Court Policies for Successful Compliance with Legal Financial Obligations, 3. 115 Office of the State Auditor, Performance Audit, Judicial Department, Court-Ordered Fines, Fees, and Restitution, 18. 116 Office of the State Auditor, 20. In the same breath, the head of the AOC also stated, “When consulting banking executives, they are surprised that our collection rate is as high as it is given the population from whom our collections are made [italics added]. Office of the State Auditor, 20. 117 Shapiro, “As Court Fees Rise, the Poor Are Paying the Price.” 118 Prison Policy Initiative, “North Carolina Profile.”