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NORTH CAROLINA POVERTY RESEARCH FUND 2 Court Fines and Fees: Criminalizing Poverty in North Carolina Preface Jill and Alex are married, in their early to mid-thirties, with two children under five. Jill is sassy and outgoing; Alex is reserved and thoughtful. They live in Orange County, North Carolina. Jill stays home to take care of the kids and avoid the high cost of daycare. Alex works full time in a local restaurant. Like many others living at the edge of poverty, they have had run-ins with the North Carolina criminal justice system. Jill pled guilty earlier this year to misdemeanor larceny. Her public defender convinced her that it was the safest course. When the court accepted her plea, it assessed $560 in fines and fees against her. She was told she would have six months to pay. If she failed to come up with it, she would be in violation of her probation. When we asked if she could come up with that money, she replied, “absolutely not, I will probably end up violating.” “We don’t even have a hundred dollars to spare,” she reported.1 Jill and Alex share a cell phone. They don’t have a car because they can’t afford it. Her driver’s license has already been revoked for failure to pay an earlier fine. That means there are a lot of jobs she can’t get. The day she appeared in court, hearings were supposed to start at nine. They didn’t get underway until ten and she was the last case called, at almost 5 p.m. She brought the kids with her, since she had no other options. Neither Jill nor the kids ate lunch because there was no affordable restaurant within walking distance of the courthouse. She has been incarcerated before for failure to pay court fees, for about ten days at a time, though it is supposed to be unconstitutional in the United States to put people in jail because they don’t have any money. The judge who assessed her fees never asked if she had a way to pay them. She fears she’ll be incarcerated again. If she goes to jail, even for a short while, Alex will have to quit his job to take care of the kids. Then, she says, they will probably lose their home. The “whole thing leaves my family feeling hopeless,” she said, “like we’ll never get back on our feet.” She called it a trap or a cycle: her family “is just never able to pay and is always burdened with these costs.” It is “almost like a set-up,” she said, “they know I won’t be able to pay.” Alex’s story is tough too. He had a difficult upbringing and has been on his own since he was 16. He got his first DWI last year. He was represented by a public defender, pled guilty and was placed on two and a half years unsupervised probation. The court assessed $850 in fines and fees, which are now due. He worries he’ll eventually be sent to jail because there’s no way he can come up with the money. Then, ironically, he’ll lose his job and his ability to support his family. It’s the “big scare” that hangs over his head. He, too, has been jailed before for failure to pay court fees and fines. And his driver’s license has been suspended. Owing the court has “made it impossible for us to get on our feet and save any money.” He doesn’t “have the luxury to ask his parents for help—never has had.” For him, it’s feed the kids or pay the court fees. “I wish fees could be paid off with volunteering or community service,” he stated. And no judge has ever asked him if he could pay the money, they just assume you can or don’t care if you can or not. People in his position “are forced to make hard decisions and end up getting in more trouble trying to 1 Jill and Alex Poulos interview with the North Carolina Poverty Research Fund, October 31, 2017. Their names, and the names of other defendants interviewed for this report, have been changed.