A recent report found that reducing the size of fines and fees increases the likelihood of collecting more revenue, and that imposing a “collections fee” to compel people to pay increases their debt burden.
The report from the Manpower Demonstration Research Corporation, published in October, draws on five years of research into fines and fees imposed in the court system within Jefferson County, Alabama, which includes Birmingham. It could have major salience in a state where governments rely heavily on fines and fees for revenue.
“The way that fines and fees are set up right now, you are not done with your sentence until you have finished paying,” said Leah Nelson, cofounder and coprincipal investigator on the project and a senior research associate at the Public Affairs Research Council of Alabama. “Meaning, based on our findings, that almost no one actually finishes. The most common outcome is not finishing.”
While the research was only isolated to one county, the process for collecting court debt is nearly identical for all counties throughout Alabama, even though the amount of charge and offense the fine is tied to may be different.