The Department of Justice investigation of the Ferguson, Mo., Police Department and court system revealed a fact those of us familiar with the criminal justice system already know: Local governments are fueled by the revenue generated by court-imposed fees and fines.
I served in the DeKalb County District Attorney’s office for 22 years. After leaving office, I began representing individuals charged with crimes.
Many of my clients are less than 25 years old and are charged with misdemeanor offenses and local ordinance violations. I spend a lot of time in municipal courts in metro Atlanta and in Athens and other college towns. Over the years, I have come to realize the vast majority of criminal cases prosecuted in local courts are prosecuted simply to raise money.
In Athens-Clarke County, according to GBI crime statistics, approximately 1,000 students are arrested each year and placed on probation for nothing more than underage possession of alcohol.
Each student is given a six-month probated sentence unless the individual also had a fake ID when arrested, a crime that adds six to 12 months to the sentence. Each student is required to pay a $200 program fee plus a $45 monthly probation supervision fee. Do the math, and you see Athens-Clarke County earns about $740,000 each year from students alone.
It is not only young people charged with minor offenses who help support local governments with their fees and fines. Persons who cannot afford to pay their fines the day they are sentenced pay more into the system than offenders who pay immediately, because they are then placed on probation to pay their fines over time. Therefore, in addition to the fine already imposed that they cannot immediately pay, they must also pay a probation supervision fee.
Sometimes the probation officers add additional fees for services such as drug testing, even when the offense had nothing to do with drugs. Therefore, a fine that initially cost the offender a few hundred dollars can ultimately cost several hundred dollars.
I propose a couple of solutions — but they will reduce local governments’ revenue, and this money might need to be raised elsewhere, such as through higher taxes. First, we do not need so many people on probation for minor crimes. In North Carolina, where I am also licensed to practice, college students are given citations, not arrested, for possession of alcohol, and they are seldom placed on paid supervised probation for a first offense. In New York, there is no probation for underage possession of alcohol.
Second, most traffic offenses should be categorized as a “rules of the road violation,” with the only possible punishment being a fine. Currently in Georgia, every traffic offense is considered a misdemeanor. Judges routinely place persons on paid probation for traffic violations. Those who cannot pay the fine on their sentence date should be offered a payment plan. If they fail to pay over time, the court would have the option of holding the offender in contempt of court and imposing a jail sentence at that time.
The purpose of our criminal statutes should not be to raise money for local governments. However, over time, we have established a criminal justice system with revenue collection as its primary purpose. Young citizens and the least capable are the ones who pay the price.
J. Tom Morgan, who practices law in Georgia and North Carolina, teaches criminal law at Western Carolina University.
