Criminal Debt Research Articles

The Burden of Criminal Justice Debt in Federal Community Supervision

The federal criminal justice system routinely requires convicted individuals to pay fines, restitution, and special assessments as part of their sentence. These criminal justice payments are an obligatory condition of federal community supervision, which a vast majority of convicted individuals are compelled to undergo. Although some of these legal financial obligations are intended to hold people accountable for criminal behavior and address crime victims’ financial losses, they also create a significant barrier to supervision success by imposing heavy economic burdens on those least able to afford them. The financial obligations imposed on the majority of federal criminal defendants both frustrate the practice of community supervision as well as create onerous and long-lasting criminal debt. The government’s inability to recover most financial legal obligations demonstrates the futility of continuing our current supervisory debt practices. Permitting courts to determine a financial assessment of a defendant’s ability to pay, allowing partial debt waiver, and creating an income-based fines and fees system would help ameliorate some of the crushing debt obligations resulting from community supervision. Unpayable criminal justice debt serves no one.

Spiraling Criminal Debt

The scale of criminal debt in the United States has exploded, with local, state and federal court imposing billions in fines and fees on people in criminal cases. If the person lacks the ability to pay or does not pay the fines, still additional financial penalties can result. Legal consequences of non-payment can in turn result in a person’s loss of a range of other rights, including employment, housing, public assistance, driver’s licenses, and voting rights. The extent of this problem of spiraling criminal debt has been increasingly well-documented and the subject of law and policy reform. This article begins by introducing the problem, through a set of studies in North Carolina, a state that along with many others has expanded the number and inflexibility of criminal fines and fees. First, a study of a novel North Carolina dataset illustrates the scale of such debt, where one in twelve adults in the state owe criminal debt. Much of that debt is concentrated in lower-level traffic and misdemeanor cases. Further, individuals who do not pay court costs or fines within a short time period never do so. Second, a study of driver’s license suspensions illustrates the further impact of those policies: one in seven North Carolina adult drivers have had their licenses indefinitely suspended. Third, surveys of affected individuals further shed light on the broader social impacts of these practices. A wide range of states and the federal government have adopted similar approaches in recent decades, imposing fines and fees in criminal cases without clear regard for ability to pay or the counterproductive impacts of these schemes. In the federal system, criminal fines are often uncollected due to inability to pay. I conclude by addressing law and policy reforms and the constitutional question whether such debt can be imposed on persons who lack ability to pay, and what Equal Protection, Due Process, Keywords: Excessive Fines Clause, and other requirements must be satisfied to constitutionally impose criminal debts.

Is There a Link Between Criminal Debt and Recidivism in Reentry?

Amid the growing interest in the legal and collateral consequences of criminal justice contact is a focus on monetary sanctions, including a full accounting of their impacts on individuals, families, communities, and system-related goals. Prior studies have highlighted a number of harms related to these sanctions, especially for those experiencing the notably turbulent period after being released from incarceration. One of the key claims heard with increased frequency is that these accrued debts encourage people to reoffend, minimizing individuals’ chances of successful reintegration and challenging fundamental goals of the system. Assuming the claim is true, policy implications could be wide-ranging, from the implementation of services to scaling back or abolishing certain financial sanctions altogether. In this Article, however, I note that there are a limited number of studies that have assessed whether financial sanctions engender reoffending and the findings are mixed. I then report results from an additional test that examines this association among a sample of men from three states and find no significant effects. I conclude that, while there are several strong reasons to support large scale reform of financial sanctioning systems, the literature suggests that the specific question concerning reoffending—whom these sanctions impact in this way and under what conditions—requires further theoretical and empirical development.

Understanding the Impact of Driver’s License Suspension: Lay Opinion in Impacted and Non-Impacted Populations

The impact of low-level criminal enforcement on communities has been the subject of a growing body of scholarship and policy work, and awareness that even minor offenses can impose unaffordable criminal debt and negatively affect other rights. Many jurisdictions suspend driving privileges for nonpayment of traffic fines or court nonappearance without considering the individual’s ability to pay, affecting millions in the United States. To investigate the impact of such suspensions, we surveyed people in North Carolina (N = 853), a state with large numbers of such suspensions. Eighteen percent of respondents having had a suspended license, with race and low income predicting higher suspension rates, and increased difficulty for daily activities and ability to pay for housing. Thus, suspension policies are of questionable deterrence value and little public safety benefit, but impose great hardship for minor offenses. We offer abolishing suspension policies for non-safety reasons as the easiest policy change, as well as other incremental options. Restoration efforts for those affected should also be implemented, despite challenges in contacting those affected and providing procedures to get their license back. As such, comprehensive local-level efforts, which we describe, are likely necessary to address the challenges and harms associated with driver’s license suspensions.

Understanding the Impact of Driver’s License Suspension: Lay Opinion in Impacted and Non-Impacted Populations

The impact of low-level criminal enforcement on communities has been the subject of a growing body of scholarship and policy work, and awareness that even in petty cases, fines can impose unaffordable criminal debt affecting other important rights. Many jurisdictions suspend driving privileges for nonpayment of traffic fines or court nonappearance without linking to ability to pay, particularly in the United States where millions are impacted. To investigate the impact of such suspensions, we surveyed people in North Carolina (N=853), a state with large numbers of such suspensions. 18% of respondents have or have had a suspended license and we find both race and income predict suspension. We also find that such a suspension imposes difficulty on a variety of daily activities and reduces the ability to pay for housing. Thus, we find these suspension policies offer little benefit but impose great hardship for low-level offenses. The most straightforward policy change is to abolish suspension policies for non-safety reasons, as some states have done. However, other options exist – such as capping the length of suspensions, or the number of cumulative times a license can be suspended. Restoration efforts for those affected should be undertaken as well, but present unique challenges in contacting those affected and providing procedures to get their license back. Specifically, contacting suspended drivers is difficult because on-file addresses may not be current, and people who are suspended may be hesitant or unable to solve legal matters, such as failing to appear for court. As such, comprehensive local-level efforts, which we describe, are likely necessary to address the challenges and harms of driver’s license suspensions.

Execution of Motor Vehicle Fiduciary Assurance by Debt Collector

This study aims to find out and analyze the validity of the execution of Fiduciary Assurance by the Debt Collector in the form of objects of motor vehicle Fiduciary Assurance associated with the Fiduciary Guarantee Act and Financial Services Authority Regulations and legal protection against Debtors in the execution of the Fiduciary Guarantee by the Debt Collector.
 The results showed that: The validity of the execution of the Fiduciary Guarantee by the Debt Collector on motor vehicle Fiduciary Assurance objects was associated with the Fiduciary Guarantee Act and Financial Services Authority Regulation, namely: Dept. Colecctor who did not fulfill formal juridical Article 50 Regulation of the Financial Services Authority Number 29/POJK.05/2014 concerning Business Management of Financing Companies is formal juridical disability, so that all actions taken by the Debt Collector in carrying out its duties as long as it is about the execution of fiduciary guarantees have an unauthorized or irrevocable effect. Whereas if the fiduciary guarantee is not registered then it is null and void because the fiduciary deed has a time limit for registration, null and void considered never existing. It is considered never existed because it involves object certainty, and legal protection against debtors in the execution of Fiduciary Guarantees by the Debt Collector, namely: in the form of preventive legal protection including the obligation of financial institutions to register fiduciary collateral objects and employ Debt Collectors who fulfill formal juridical requirements in accordance 50 Regulation of the Financial Services Authority Number 29/POJK.05/2014 concerning Business Operations of Financing Companies. Whereas Repressive legal protection can be in the form of errors committed by the Colector Dept. can be in the form of a matter, firstly, the business license of the Financing Company can be revoked, the second is civilly the Business Entity of the Financing Company can be compensated and the third is Criminal Debt Collector can be imposed Article 365 The Criminal Code as long as the criminal elements are fulfilled have the ability to be responsible.

Crime Does Not Pay: Understanding Criminal Debt

Crime Does Not Pay: Understanding Criminal Debt

Identification With a Violent and Sadistic Aggressor: A Rorschach Study of Criminal Debt Collectors

abstractThis study examined personality functioning in a group of 27 incarcerated criminal debt collectors as assessed by the Rorschach Inkblot Method (RIM; Rorschach, 1921/1942) and the Psychopathy Checklist–Revised (PCL–R; Hare, 2003). To explore whether these individuals represent a distinct subgroup within the violent offender population, we compared them to a group of incarcerated homicide offenders (n = 23) without a previous history of significant violence and a group who had committed less serious violent crimes (n = 21). Results revealed significantly more Rorschach indicators of past trauma (Trauma Content Index), aggressive urges (Aggressive Potential) and identification (Aggressive Content) among the debt collectors than the 2 other groups. In addition, debt collectors displayed significantly more interpersonal interest (Sum Human content), and significantly higher scores on the PCL–R. Our findings suggest that the debt collector might be viewed as a hostile variant of psychopathy.