Shackled to Debt: Criminal Justice Financial Obligations and the Barriers to Re-Entry They Create

New Thinking in Community Corrections

V E

HARVARD

Kenne

Program in

Criminal Justice

Policy and

Mana

ment

Executive Session on

Community Corrections

This is one in a series of papers that will be

published as a result of the Executive Session on

Community Corrections.

The Executive Sessions at Harvard Kennedy

School bring together individuals of independent

standing who take joint responsibility for

rethinking and improving society’s responses to

an issue. Members are selected based on their

experiences, their reputation for thoughtfulness

and their potential for helping to disseminate the

work of the Session.

Members of the Executive Session on Community

Corrections have come together with the aim of

developing a new paradigm for correctional policy

at a historic time for criminal justice reform. The

Executive Session works to explore the role of

community corrections and communities in the

interest of justice and public safety.

Learn more about the Executive Session on

Community Corrections at:

NIJ’s website: www.NIJ.gov, keywords “Executive

Session Community Corrections”

Harvard’s website: http://www.hks.harvard.edu/

criminaljustice/communitycorrections

JANUARY 2017 • NO. 4

Shackled to Debt: Criminal Justice Financial Obligations

and the Barriers to Re-Entry They Create

Karin D. Martin, Sandra Susan Smith and Wendy Still

Introduction

Formerly incarcerated people face a considerable

number of obstacles to successful re-entry. eir

ability to graduate from community supervision

is complicated by their low and eroding levels of

education and skills (Waldfogel, 1994; Western,

Lopoo and McLanahan, 2004; Lopoo and

Western, 2005), serious mental and physical

health conditions that often go untreated (Travis,

2000; Mallik-Kane and Visher, 2008; Binswanger,

Krueger and Steiner, 2009; Rich, Wakeman and

Dickman, 2011), and alcohol and drug addictions

(Bureau of Justice Statistics, n.d.; Karberg

and James, 2005; Mumola and Karberg, 2006),

which are issues nurtured in neighborhoods of

concentrated disadvantage from which many

justice-involved people come. State-sanctioned

barriers, including government restrictions

on access to public-sector employment and

government-related private occupations (Dale,

1976; May, 1995; Olivares, Burton and Cullen,

1996; Petersilia, 2003; Bushway and Sweeten,

2007), restrictions on voting rights (Manza

and Uggen, 2006), and limited access to public

housing and social welfare programs also hinder

Cite this paper as: Martin, Karin D., Sandra Susan Smith, and Wendy Still.

Shackled to Debt: Criminal Justice Financial Obligations and the Barriers

to Re-Entry They Create. New Thinking in Community Corrections Bulletin.

Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Justice, National Institute of Justice,

2017. NCJ 249976.

2 | New Thinking in Community Corrections

reintegration efforts (Carey, 2004; Thompson,

2004). Despite recent successes

in an eort to

“ban the box” — the “box” on employment and

college applications that asks about criminal

history — the social stigma that justice-involved

people face further compounds problems with

re-entry, including their attempts to nd work

(Pager, 2003, 2007).

To this lengthy list we add yet another signicant

state-sanctioned barrier — criminal justice

financial obligations (CJFOs), also known as

monetary sanctions or legal nancial obligations.

There are at least five types of CJFOs (Ruback

and Bergstrom, 2006; Harris, Evans and Beckett,

2010): nes and forfeiture of property, which are

intended as punishment; costs and fees, including

but not limited to court costs and supervision

fees, which reimburse the state for costs

associated with the administration of justice;

and restitution, a financial payout to specific

victims or a general fund designated for them,

intended to compensate victims for the losses

they have suered.

Although some have written

about the benets of incorporating CJFOs as one

option among many criminal justice sanctions

(Morris and Tonry, 1990; Gordon and Glaser,

1991; Ruback and Bergstrom, 2006), this form of

sanction can, if left unchecked, have long-term

effects that significantly harm the efforts of

formerly incarcerated people to rehabilitate and

reintegrate, thus compromising key principles

of fairness in the administration of justice in

a democratic society and engendering deep

distrust of the criminal justice system among

those overburdened by them.

In what follows, we describe trends in the

assessment of CJFOs, discuss the historical

context within which these trends have unfolded,

and reflect on their unintended (but perhaps

easily foreseen) consequences. We then treat

restitution separately, given the distinct function

(in theory at least) that restitution serves. We also

raise serious concerns about how restitution

tends to be implemented and who benets from

this particular obligation. We end by considering

alternative models for the effective and fair

deployment of nes, fees and restitution in the

criminal justice context.

Historical and Institutional Context

CJFOs are not new. According to Harris and

colleagues (2010: 1758), “monetary sanctions

were integral to systems of criminal justice,

debt bondage, and racial domination in the

American South for decades.” Although their

use waned signicantly in the rst half of the

20th century, CJFOs have proliferated since

the 1980s. As a result of statutes and policies at

every level — city/municipal, county, state and

federal — that mandate various forms of CJFOs,

the vast majority of people who come into contact

with the criminal justice system and are found

guilty (and some who are not) pay for these

encounters or are punished for not doing so.

Shackled to Debt: Criminal Justice Financial Obligations and the Barriers to Re-entry They Create | 3

The 1960s and 1970s marked an opening for

the resurgence of CJFOs. According to Garland

(2001), the rehabilitative approach to crime and

punishment had been hegemonic since the 1890s.

Under this approach, crime was understood in

terms of relative deprivation. Specically, when

deprived of proper education, socialization,

opportunities and treatment, individuals were

more likely to become involved with the justice

system. But with individualized treatment, aid

to and supervision of families, institutionalized

supports for education, and job creation and

training, people would likely abstain from further

criminal behavior. Mass protests of the 1960s

and 1970s, however, inspired a marked shift in

values and approaches to criminal justice. With

unrest related to the Vietnam War, women’s

liberation and various Civil Rights revolutions

threatening to fundamentally disrupt the

foundation on which well-established racial,

gendered and class-based hierarchies had been

built, many people raised serious concerns about

the rehabilitative approach, arguing that it was

ineective (relative to alternative approaches) at

addressing the emerging threats society faced.

These critics favored the retributive approach

instead. In this approach, criminal behavior

was not considered a deviation from the norm

but rather a rational choice by self-serving actors

who were taking advantage of opportunities

in contexts where sufficient controls and

disincentives for crime were weak or nonexistent.

State eorts at retribution, incapacitation and the

management of risk would eectively curtail such

self-serving, opportunistic behaviors.

With this shift in values came the implementation

of a set of rigid criminal justice policies —

determinate sentencing, truth in sentencing,

mandatory minimums and three strikes — that

not only drove up rates of incarceration but also

dramatically increased the numbers of those

under supervision outside the nation’s jails and

prisons (Western, 2006; Wacquant, 2009; Raphael

and Stoll, 2013). Between 1925 and 1975, fewer

than 100 Americans per 100,000 were in prison.

By 2003, even though crime rates had remained

relatively stable, this number had quadrupled

to more than 400 per 100,000. Further, between

1983 and 2001, incarceration (jail and prison) in

the United States increased from 275 inmates

per 100,000 to 686 inmates per 100,000, more

than five times the rate in Western European

countries (Western, 2006). e numbers of people

under community supervision also increased

dramatically. In 1980, Wacquant (2009) reports

that 1.84 million were on probation or parole. By

1990, that gure had increased to 4.35 million and

jumped again to 6.47 million by 2000 (Wacquant,

2009).

e proliferation of CJFOs was likely a result, direct

and indirect, of this cultural shift to retribution.

First, in an era of “just deserts” punishment, the

increased use of nes and forfeiture, alone or in

combination with other forms of nonmonetary

sanctions, signaled to the public that people who

committed crimes were being made to account

for their actions (Wacquant, 2009). Second, the

1970s cultural shift included increased concern

for victims who, it was argued, should be

4 | New Thinking in Community Corrections

made whole — through reparations — after

experiencing crime-related losses (Office for

Victims of Crime, 2013; Garland, 2001).

Third — and perhaps most important — as

the criminal justice apparatus swelled to

accommodate the oceans of people cycling in

and out of the system’s courts, jails, prisons, and

probation and parole departments, so too have

the costs to operate such a system. For instance,

Wacquant (2009) shows that, between 1980 and

1997, criminal justice budgets — those devoted

to police, justice and corrections — increased

from roughly $35 billion to $130 billion per

year. Growth in criminal justice personnel also

skyrocketed, from approximately 1.3 million

in 1980 to 2.1 million in 1997. Wacquant (2009)

notes that, based on the number of personnel

in 1997, American criminal justice was the third

largest employer in the country, second only to

Manpower, Inc., and Walmart.

However, legislators have been reluctant to pass

these dramatically rising costs on to taxpayers.

Jurisdictions have instead shifted more of the

costs to justice-involved people through CJFOs

(Wacquant, 2009), implicating every stage of

criminal case processing (Bannon, Nagrecha

and Diller, 2010).

ey have done so in at least

three ways — by imposing numerous new nes,

fees and surcharges; by increasing the amounts

associated with CJFOs; and by adopting more

proactive strategies to collect debt. In California,

for instance, 16 different statutes codify 269

separate court nes, fees, forfeitures, surcharges

and penalty assessments that, depending on

the type of oense, may now be assessed (Nieto,

2006). Texas has 15 categories of court costs

that are “always assessed” and an additional 18

discretionary CJFOs that include fees for being

committed or released from jail (Texas District

Court, 2013). In Washington state, a defendant

with a single conviction is subjected to 24 nes

and fees (Beckett and Harris, 2011).

Jurisdictions have also shifted costs to justice-

involved people by increasing the amounts

and numbers of nes, fees and surcharges they

assess. For instance, since 1996, Florida added

more than 20 new categories of CJFOs and

recently increased amounts of existing fees and

surcharges in two consecutive years (Bannon,

Nagrecha and Diller, 2010; Diller, 2010). In New

York state — where the laws require 10 mandatory

surcharges, 19 fees

and six civil penalties ranging

from $5 to $750 — lawmakers have repeatedly

increased the amounts and numbers of fees and

surcharges since the early 1990s (Rosenthal and

Weissman, 2007). In 2008 alone, two “additional

surcharges” were assessed for driving oenses;

fees for assistance to victims of misdemeanor

crimes and felony crimes were increased by $5

each; and surcharges for felonies, misdemeanors

and violations were increased by $5 to $50

(Bannon, Nagrecha and Diller, 2010). In 2009,

North Carolina initiated two new fees — a $25

late fee for debtors making tardy payments and

a $20 surcharge for those wishing to establish a

payment plan for their CJFOs. North Carolina also

increased fees for defendants who fail to appear

in court and increased the costs associated with

lab tests (Bannon, Nagrecha and Diller, 2010).

Shackled to Debt: Criminal Justice Financial Obligations and the Barriers to Re-entry They Create | 5

Since 2010, 48 states have increased civil and

criminal fees (Shapiro, 2014), a likely response

to government coers emptied by the eects of

the Great Recession (Burch, 2011; Government

Accountability Oce, 2015). It is no wonder, then,

that CJFOs have become ubiquitous.

With ubiquity, the odds of justice-involved

persons receiving one or more monetary

sanctions and the median amounts assessed

have increased substantially.

For instance,

Harris and colleagues (2010) report that

25 percent of federal prison inmates were

assessed nes, but that gure rose to 66 percent

by 2004 — only 13 years later.

Although the

prevalence of fines and restitution payments

subsided to 32 percent of federal nonimmigration

cases in 2015, it is important to note that the

overwhelming majority of cases for some federal

offenses — robbery, fraud, larceny, arson and

burglary, for instance — received a ne or were

required to pay restitution (U.S. Sentencing

Commission, 2015).

On the state level, 4 percent of persons convicted

of felonies who were sentenced to prison in 1986

were also ned; by 2004, that gure was seven

times higher (28 percent) (Harris, Evans and

Beckett, 2010). On the local level, 12 percent

of persons charged with felonies who were

sentenced to jail in 1985 (awaiting trial or serving

time for less serious felonies) were also ned; by

2004, that gure tripled to 37 percent. In addition,

17 percent of people on probation for felonies in

1986 were also ned; by 2004, that gure more

than doubled to 36 percent.

For persons who are incarcerated, the

overwhelming majority now accumulate mounds

of debt due to numerous fees while behind bars.

A 1997 survey of the nation’s largest jails revealed

that more than three-quarters of people in jail

were charged fees for a host of programs and

services, most notably medical care, per diem

payments, work release programs and telephone

use; the latter three produced the greatest revenue

by far. By 2005, that gure had risen to 90 percent.

In addition, more than 85 percent of people on

probation and parole are now required to pay

supervision fees, nes, court costs or restitution

to victims to remain free from further sanctions

(Travis and Petersilia, 2001; Rainville and Reaves,

2003; Siegel and Senna, 2007).

e result of this expansion in the numbers and

amounts of CJFOs, deployed at every stage of

criminal case processing, is that some 10 million

people owe more than $50 billion from contact

with the criminal justice system (National Center

for Victims of Crime, 2011; Evans, 2014; Eisen,

2015).

To be clear, jurisdictions collect only

a fraction of this debt each year; for instance,

people owe the federal government more

than $100 billion in criminal debt, and federal

judges assessed nearly $14 billion in monetary

penalties in fiscal year 2014, but the federal

government collects only $4 billion each year (U.S.

Department of Justice, 2015). Nevertheless, CJFOs

still produce signicant revenue for federal, state

and municipal coers. According to the Criminal

Court of the City of New York (2014), in the New

York metropolitan area, nes generate 47 percent

of criminal court revenue, which is then split

6 | New Thinking in Community Corrections

between New York City and the state. Another

report nds that “administrative assessments

on citations fund nearly all of the Administrative

Oce of the Court’s budget in Nevada [and] ...

[i]n Texas, probation fees made up 46 percent of

the Travis County Probation Department’s $18.3

million budget in 2006” (McLean and ompson,

2007: 3). In Ferguson, Missouri — the site of

major protests against police brutality inspired

by the death of 18-year-old Michael Brown at the

hands of a Ferguson police ocer — nes, fees

and surcharges, which are generously assessed

and aggressively collected (particularly during

periods of projected general revenue shortfalls)

covered slightly more than 20 percent of the

general revenue fund. In nearby towns, this

gure was much higher.

Unintended Consequences

Four principles have informed an ideal of how

justice in the United States should be meted

out — (1) the punishment should t the crime

(proportionality); (2) the punishment should

not exceed the minimum needed to achieve

its legitimate purpose (parsimony); (3) the

punishment should not compromise a formerly

incarcerated person’s chance to lead a fullling

and successful life (citizenship); and (4) penal

systems should avoid reproducing social

inequalities, especially given that formerly

incarcerated people disproportionately come

from disadvantaged families and communities

(National Research Council, 2014). These

principles must be a part of any deliberation to

establish fair and just penal policies and practices.

However, it seems these principles have largely

been ignored in order to recover the costs of a

behemoth penal apparatus by increasing the

amounts and numbers of CJFOs. As a result, on

all levels of government, policymakers’ actions

have produced a set of unintended and negative

consequences — especially for poor people and

people of color — a point we turn to next.

Law Enforcement or Debt Collection?

During periods of economic downturn,

government revenues from various forms of

taxes inevitably fall; the temptation is to fund

government by adding new fees and surcharges,

increasing the size of CJFOs, and deploying

law enforcement in ever more aggressive debt

collection strategies. is will be too much for

some jurisdictions to ignore, especially if the

failure to engage in these practices would lead to

budget decits otherwise resolved with job cuts

in the system. Indeed, since 2010, several states

(including but not limited to Arizona, Louisiana,

Ohio and Texas) have implemented new fees and

increased already existing surcharges and fees

to address 2010 budget shortfalls (Burch, 2011).

Given this, we must consider what perverse

incentives we create by tying the solvency of major

institutions to criminal justice enforcement.

Essentially, the basic conict that emerges when

a public institution is both the originator and

the beneciary of nancial obligations is that

resources are directed away from other critical,

but less lucrative, law-enforcing or adjudicating

tasks (e.g., clearing backlogs of DNA analysis or

testing rape kits).

Shackled to Debt: Criminal Justice Financial Obligations and the Barriers to Re-entry They Create | 7

Perhaps more egregious is that such pressures

can foster collusion between government

agencies to generate revenue via law enforcement.

Indeed, Ferguson provides stark evidence

that court officials’ use of law enforcement

to generate revenue to fund government can

lead to corruption and injustice, especially for

vulnerable populations. ere, the city nance

director explicitly urged both the police chief

and the city manager to write more tickets in

order to fill municipal coffers. In other words,

the system in Ferguson sought to extract

income for the county and state from some

of its most disenfranchised citizens, often

through unconstitutional stops and arrests. Also,

according to the Department of Justice report on

Ferguson, law enforcement practices — driven in

part by racial bias — produced and exacerbated

racial disparities throughout local policing, court

and jail systems.

e overwhelming majority

of those arrested only because of an outstanding

municipal (civil) warrant (96 percent) were

African-American (U.S. Department of Justice,

2015). As a result, they bore a disproportionate

burden as the primary population targeted to

make up for government revenue shortfalls.

Adjacent cities and towns were no better, nor is it

clear that such practices are specic to Missouri.

Evidence from California reveals similar patterns

of disproportionate harm of CJFO enforcement on

minority communities (e.g., Lawyers’ Committee

for Civil Rights of the San Francisco Bay Area,

2015). Moreover, because contact with police is

the common entry point to the criminal justice

system, any role of CJFOs in increasing exposure

to police merits careful scrutiny because such

incentives can encourage more aggressive

policing and punitive punishments targeted at

the poorest and most powerless among us.

The same pressures to produce revenue affect

probation and parole officers, who end up

facing mutually incompatible demands. As

social workers, they are expected to assess the

needs of people under supervision and facilitate

treatment. As law enforcement agents, they

are expected to monitor and surveil formerly

incarcerated persons (Rothman, 1980; Travis

and Petersilia, 2001; Wodahl and Garland, 2009).

As debt collectors, they are expected to monitor

payments, set up payment plans, aggressively

press people under supervision to pay court-

ordered and community corrections-related

CJFOs, and penalize them (including revoking

probation or parole) for missed payments

(Bannon, Nagrecha and Diller, 2010). e rst

two responsibilities relate to public safety

concerns but pit the “ocer as advocate” who

offers individualized treatment against the

“ocer as law enforcement agent” who manages

risk.

The third responsibility, however, does

not ensure public safety at all; perhaps with the

exception of restitution to victims, it is solely

about generating revenue, which is disbursed to

a general fund or to criminal justice agencies. But

this third responsibility is the one that is likely to

be prioritized in a system whose nancial health

and well-being — indeed, the stability of ocers’

very own positions — hinge on it. Such eorts,

however, distract from ocers’ responsibilities to

ensure public safety and facilitate rehabilitation.

Given the incentives inherent in prioritizing

8 | New Thinking in Community Corrections

officers’ roles as debt collectors, we might

have anticipated some of the unfair and unjust

practices that have emerged.

Punishing the Poor

CJFOs can be quite daunting. In some states,

however, it is dicult to say with any precision

exactly how much those who have had contact

with the criminal justice system have been

assessed because, according to Bannon and

colleagues (2010), information about fees, nes,

surcharges and restitution cannot be found in

any one statutory code, and dierent types of

monetary sanctions are collected at different

stages of criminal case processing. Case studies

of different jurisdictions have been revealing.

Amounts vary by state but, for example, court

records from 2005 to 2011 reveal that persons

convicted of felonies in Alabama accrued a

median of about $5,000 in CJFOs (Meredith

and Morse, 2015). The Texas Office of Court

Administration reports that individuals released

on parole owe between $500 and $2,000 in

offense-related debt, a figure that does not

include restitution. A recent study examining the

hidden costs of incarceration nds that families

of the formerly incarcerated incur, on average,

$13,607 for court-related nes and fees (deVuono-

powell et al., 2015). An analysis of data from

Washington state revealed court assessments

ranging from a minimum of $500 (mandatory for

all felony convictions) to a maximum of $256,257;

the median amount assessed per person was

$5,254 and the mean was $11,471 (Harris, Evans

and Beckett, 2010). Because the vast majority

of formerly incarcerated people are poor or

near poor (Western, 2006), these gures are not

inconsequential. In the short or long term, most

of them simply could not aord to fulll these

unreasonably high debt burdens.

Further, being indigent rarely exempts a person

from CJFOs.

Focusing on the 15 states with

the largest prison populations, Bannon and

colleagues (2010) identified four mechanisms

through which the courts’ administration

of CJFOs have created barriers to re-entry.

First, even when courts had the discretion

to waive or modify monetary sanctions, few

considered whether people had the financial

resources to meet these obligations, and few

had institutionalized mechanisms to reduce

CJFOs contingent on people’s nancial resources

(Bannon, Nagrecha and Diller, 2010). Second, few

states provided adequate payment plans to allow

formerly incarcerated people who are indigent to

pay down their debts over time; among states that

did, some required that people pay a fee to apply.

Third, for indigent individuals, jurisdictions

could replace CJFOs with community service.

Some of the 15 states studied, however, did not

oer community service as an alternative, and

those that did oered limited options that the

courts rarely chose. Nor do these states offer

exemptions from the consequences associated

with inability to pay because of indigence. Unpaid

CJFOs are subject not only to unreasonably

high interest on court-imposed sanctions but

are also routinely subject to late fees, fees for

payment plans, and debt collection fees (Bannon,

Nagrecha and Diller, 2010).

Consequently,

formerly incarcerated people and their family

Shackled to Debt: Criminal Justice Financial Obligations and the Barriers to Re-entry They Create | 9

members, who often shoulder the bulk of the

legal debt burden (Wacquant, 2009; deVuono-

powell et al., 2015; Nagrecha and Katzenstein,

2015), can be saddled with these obligations for

decades. erein lies one of the major problems

with CJFOs, as applied in the U.S. For many, there

is no end to the resulting debt (Beckett, Harris

and Evans, 2008; American Civil Liberties

Union, 2010; Harris, Evans and Beckett, 2010;

Bannon, Nagrecha and Diller, 2010; Katzenstein

and Nagrecha, 2011). e common, signicant

time lag between assessment and nal payment

undermines the goal of nality in punishment

and poses significant obstacles to achieving

stability because even small monthly payments

on debt could reduce take-home pay substantially

among disadvantaged families and thus make

it extremely difficult to meet other needs and

obligations (deVuono-powell et al., 2015).

For many, criminal justice debt can also

trigger a cascade of debilitating consequences,

many of which undermine post-incarceration

re-entry goals such as finding stable housing,

transportation and employment (Bannon,

Nagrecha and Diller, 2010; Beckett and Harris,

2011). For instance, Bannon and colleagues

(2010) find that legal debt can be a hindrance

to obtaining a driver’s license,

can restrict

voting rights,

and can interfere with obtaining

credit and making child support payments.

Criminal justice debt can also prompt additional

warrants, liens, wage garnishment and tax rebate

interception. In addition, it can lead to a civil

judgment, which is available to credit agencies

because this information is made public. With

poorer credit scores, individuals with legal debt

also risk being denied employment, and they

may be unable to secure credit cards, mortgages,

leases or loans. us, employment, housing and

transportation are all jeopardized. And, to be

clear, in each of these areas the impacts are far

greater for racial minorities than for whites, not

solely because the former are disproportionately

represented in the criminal justice system.

Not only are they more likely to be targets of

aggressive law enforcement practices, once

caught in the criminal justice net they are also

penalized more harshly (Rosich, 2007; Spohn,

2000; Mitchell and MacKenzie, 2004; Jannetta et

al., 2014; Starr and Rehavi, 2012).

For some formerly incarcerated individuals,

these liabilities may also have the unintended

consequence of reducing commitment to work,

increasing reliance on available forms of public

assistance (in some cases, CJFOs can make a

person ineligible for receiving public assistance),

or motivating further criminal involvement.

According to Harris and colleagues (2010), 80

percent of the respondents found their legal debt

obligations to be “unduly burdensome.” Despite

the possibility that they might be sanctioned

with jail time for nonpayment, some chose not

to work, instead engaging in criminal activity

or relying on state benets (where these had not

been revoked because of CJFOs) to make ends

meet (also see Martin, 2015).

Perhaps the most intolerable penalty that formerly

incarcerated people who are indigent face for

inability to pay CJFOs is to be re-incarcerated. A

10 | New Thinking in Community Corrections

lawsuit

against the City of Ferguson, Missouri

describes the experience of Ms. Fant, which

illustrates this concern:

Ms. Fant was a 37-year-old single mother who

worked as a certied nurse’s assistant. Over the

course of 20 years, she was arrested more than a

dozen times. On the way to taking her children

to school one day in 2013, she was arrested and

taken to jail because of old traffic tickets. She

was initially told that she would only be released

after paying $300, but she was then “released”

for free. Being released, however, just meant

that the arresting jurisdiction had dropped its

demand for money. Because she had unpaid

tickets in other nearby places (that paid for a

central city to house their jail inmates), “release”

meant she was kept in the same jail under the

auspices of other jurisdictions. As a result, she

was held in a single jail, but transferred to the

custody of one jurisdiction to another, totaling

ve dierent jurisdictions — each holding her

for three to four days and each insisting on

hundreds or thousands of dollars to secure her

liberty. Eventually, she was told that her release

amount was $1,400, but after it was clear she

would not be able to come up with the money,

she was released without paying anything. is

freedom was temporary. e following year, she

was arrested again and told that she would have

to pay $1,400 or be held indenitely. is time, her

family and friends came up with $1,000 and she

was released. She was told to make future cash

payments directly to the Police Department.

Despite the Supreme Court ruling in Bearden v.

Georgia (461 U.S. 660-661, 1983), which found

that inability to pay cannot be the reason to

revoke probation or to re-incarcerate,

there is

ample evidence that inability to pay is indeed

associated with expanded custody (American

Civil Liberties Union, 2010). Incarceration can

follow CJFOs in at least four ways. First, probation

and parole can be revoked or not granted for

nonpayment of CJFOs. According to Bannon and

colleagues (2010), regardless of the fact that none

of the 15 states they studied adequately sought to

determine individuals’ ability to pay, at least 13 of

these states allowed for revocation of probation

and parole in cases where formerly incarcerated

persons missed payments. Second, criminal

and civil offenses can result in incarceration

via willful failure to pay CJFOs, an action that

is interpreted as civil contempt. ird, in some

states (such as Missouri), criminal justice

debtors can “pay off” their debt by “choosing”

jail — requesting to participate in programs that

allow them to pay down court-imposed debt by

spending time in jail. Finally, individuals can be

arrested and jailed in some states (e.g., Texas) for

missing a debt payment or for failing to appear at

a court hearing relating to a missed debt payment

(e.g., Georgia). In February 2016, for instance,

seven armed U.S. Marshals arrested and jailed

Paul Aker, a Texas resident, for failure to appear

in court to address a 29-year-old delinquent

federal student loan; the original loan was

$1,500 (Lobosco, 2016). Roughly one-quarter of

the respondents in Harris and colleagues’ 2010

study served time in jail for nonpayment of fees

and nes; another study found that 12 percent

had been re-incarcerated for missing payments

(deVuono-powell et al., 2015). us, as assessed

Shackled to Debt: Criminal Justice Financial Obligations and the Barriers to Re-entry They Create | 11

and administered in the U.S., CJFOs can be quite

punitive and insufficiently parsimonious. In

those instances, their administration challenges

even basic notions of citizenship rights and social

justice.

Distrust and Demoralization

When people perceive that law enforcement

ocials have treated them unfairly, they come

to distrust the motives of legal authorities and

to negatively assess the procedures by which

legal authorities engage them. ey also come

to question the very legitimacy on which law

enforcement’s authority rests, feeding an

unwillingness to consent or to cooperate with

law enforcement in general (Tyler and Huo, 2002).

us, to the extent that CJFOs are administered

in unfair and unjust ways, it should come as no

surprise that the U.S. system of CJFOs breeds

deep distrust of the criminal justice system,

especially among the poor and people of color.

To illustrate, the Department of Justice (DOJ)

report on Ferguson highlighted how the unfair,

unlawful, disrespectful and harmful practices

of the police and the courts, both in Ferguson

and in nearby towns and cities, led Ferguson’s

black residents to both fear and distrust them,

further deteriorating already strained relations

between law enforcement and the communities

they are tasked to serve as well as contributing to

less eective, more dicult, less safe and more

discriminatory policing (U.S. Department of

Justice, 2015).

CJFOs may also be demoralizing for officers,

especially police, probation and parole ocers.

When signing on for service, most of them

likely imagined that they would help make their

communities safer and would positively impact

the lives of those at high risk for future criminal

involvement. Few, if any, signed up to become

debt collectors. But, in many jurisdictions,

systemic pressure to produce revenue puts

ocers in this position, whether or not they like

it. In Ferguson, for instance, where community

policing eorts had never been more than modest,

their efforts had recently declined further to

focus more police time and energy on revenue

generation. According to the DOJ report (U.S.

Department of Justice, 2015: 87):

Ocers we spoke with were fairly consistent in

their acknowledgment of this, and of the fact

that this move away from community policing

has been due, at least in part, to an increased

focus on code enforcement and revenue

generation in recent years. [O]ur investigation

found that FPD redeployed ocers to 12-hour

shifts, in part for revenue reasons ... . While

many officers in Ferguson support 12-hour

shifts, several told us that the 12-hour shift

has undermined community policing. One

ocer said that “FPD used to have a strong

community policing ethic — then we went

to a 12-hour day.” ... Another ocer told us

that FPD ocers should put less energy into

writing tickets and instead “get out of their cars”

and get to know community members. One

ocer told us that ocers could spend more

time engaging with community members

and undertaking problem-solving projects if

FPD ocers were not so focused on activities

12 | New Thinking in Community Corrections

that generate revenue. This officer told us,

“everything’s about the courts ... the court’s

enforcement priorities are money.”

It is dicult to say how widespread the perception

is among ocers that debt collection has directed

attention away from arguably more important

roles that law enforcement ocers can play in the

communities they serve, but the comments that

ocers in Ferguson shared suggest that ocers’

morale might be a part of the collateral damage

from the expansion of a monetary sanctions

system that relies heavily on ocers’ eorts to

collect debts.

Victims and Restitution

Restitution stands somewhat apart from the

other types of CJFOs. It is meant to be assessed

when there is both an identifiable victim and

quantiable (i.e., “monetizable”) harm to person

or property. e underlying notion is to directly

compensate a crime victim for a specific loss

stemming from the offense. Therefore, on the

federal level at least, restitution is mandatory for

several categories of oenses, as stipulated in

the Mandatory Victims Restitution Act of 1996.

Problems arise, however, when we examine

both the practice and the consequences of

restitution as it is actually implemented. First,

the system of payment and disbursement very

often severs the direct link between the person

who committed the crime and the victim. A judge

may issue either a direct order for restitution,

which is related to a victim’s loss, or the person

who committed the oense may have to pay to a

general restitution fund. e rst case preserves

the notion of “restoration” inherent in restitution,

but the second case is far less clear. Surely, a

victim who cannot collect from the person who

actually committed the offense still benefits

from compensation from a state restitution fund.

Indeed, Vermont (where the average individual

restitution order is $1,100) has a system that

allows for victims to be paid immediately

upon court order, using capital funded by a

15-percent surcharge on all criminal and civil

nes (Vermont Center for Crime Victim Services,

2012). But the ip side of this arrangement is that

people convicted of oenses must contribute to

compensating victims of crimes in which they

played no role (and even when they have inicted

no harm to an identiable victim or property).

How this ultimately weighs in the balance in

terms of ethics is beyond the scope of this report;

however, the situation merits careful attention

when considering the universe of CJFOs and their

consequences.

The second problem with restitution is the

enormous, intractable and growing gap

between the restitution amounts assessed and

the amounts actually collected and disbursed.

By one estimate, total state restitution debt was

nearly $40 billion in 2007 (Dickman, 2009). At the

federal level, there is more than $100 billion in

uncollected criminal debt, of which restitution

is a large portion. Collection rates across the

country reveal the extent of the problem. In

Florida, people convicted of felonies owe $709

million of restitution debt, of which the state

Shackled to Debt: Criminal Justice Financial Obligations and the Barriers to Re-entry They Create | 13

collects 4.5 percent (Burnett, 2012). In Iowa,

judges ordered $159 million in restitution over

a ve-year period but collected only $19 million

during the same period (12 percent of the amount

owed) (Eckhoff, 2012). In Texas, the parole

division collected 5.3 percent of the $43 million

that discharged parolees owed between 2003

and 2008; fewer than 10 percent of parolees paid

their restitution in full (Vogel, 2008). Vermont’s

restitution collection rate of 31.8 percent for

2005 to 2010 is, by comparison, relatively high

(National Center for Victims of Crime, 2011).

Not only are collection rates generally poor,

but the amount of outstanding restitution debt

is growing. For instance, the amount of unpaid

restitution in Florida grew 51 percent between

2007 and 2012 (Burnett, 2012).

Of course, these low collection rates mean low

disbursement rates — very few victims are paid

or are paid in full. Pennsylvania, for example,

disbursed less than 12 percent of the $435

million it assessed in restitution for the three

years ending in 2012 (Pennsylvania Office of

the Victim Advocate and the Center for Schools

and Communities, 2013). Minnesota assesses

$25 million in restitution, with an individual

average of $2,100. Of this, only 25 percent is paid,

but taking into account restitution that is reduced,

adjusted or credited, the amount of restitution

that is “satised” reaches 49 percent. ere is also

signicant variation by county: outstanding debt

ranges from as low as 6 percent of the assessed

amount to as high as 83 percent (Minnesota

Restitution Working Group, 2015).

Finally, it is essential to remember that — from

the perspective of the debtor — restitution is

simply part of a formidable amount of criminal

justice debt. Importantly, this debt incurs

disproportionate harm. An analysis of 80,000

Florida correctional cases found that unpaid

restitution rendered almost 40 percent of the

debtors ineligible to have their rights restored

(Diller, 2010). In sum, although restitution serves

a particularly distinct function compared to the

other CJFOs, it suers from pitfalls that render it

just as problematic.

Recommendations

As administered in the U.S. system, CJFOs can

be punitive and insufficiently parsimonious.

As others have written (Bannon, Nagrecha and

Diller, 2010; deVuono-powell et al., 2015), we

can and must do better. In what follows, we

offer recommendations for reform. Although

these recommendations will not reverse the

damage done to individuals, their families

and the communities they come from, if these

or similar reforms are implemented moving

forward, millions of people who are enmeshed

in the criminal justice system might avoid the

same troubling fate.

We propose two sets of reforms. e rst regards

the use of CJFOs for low-income or poor people

and includes six recommendations. First, when

setting out to use CJFOs to punish and deter

or repair and reimburse victims, we must

consider people’s ability to pay. In the U.S.,

statutorily mandated fines, fees, surcharges

and restitution are not adjusted to ability to

14 | New Thinking in Community Corrections

pay (Justice Management Institute and Vera

Institute of Justice, 1996). However, tailoring

the sanction to the individual, as is often done

in parts of Europe (Kantorowicz, 2014), would

avoid many of the deleterious eects found in

the American CJFO system. In Europe, “day-

nes” (as they are called) are calculated on the

basis of a person’s nancial situation — typically

by calculating a percentage of income — and the

severity of the oense (Hillsman and Mahoney,

1988; Vera Institute of Justice, 1988).

In addition,

because the nancial burden on the individual

is considered seriously as part of the assessment

rationale, European countries that have adopted

this approach have been able to generate income

without undermining the basic tenets of eective

criminal justice policy (Frase, 2001).

Second, additional safeguards need to be

implemented so as not to penalize the poor for

being poor. e short- and long-term prospects

for people who are formerly incarcerated or under

supervision are also negatively aected by the

interest that accrues on criminal justice debt

as well as the fees and penalties for delinquent

payments, payment plans and debt collector

services. ese contribute to poverty entrapment

by further increasing the debt burden for these

individuals, making it difficult to make ends

meet and blocking opportunities for social and

economic stability and mobility. As a penalty

for tardy or missed payments, or missed court

hearings because of delinquent payments,

(re)incarceration also penalizes the poor. Very

simply, these poverty penalties need to be

eliminated — interest should not be allowed

to accrue on the CJFOs that are assessed; the

poor, as objectively determined, should not

have to pay fees to apply for payment plans, as

penalties for late payments, or as part of an

aggressive campaign of debt collection; and

under no circumstances should individuals

be incarcerated for delinquency on financial

obligations related to criminal or civil judgments.

Importantly, by taking an individual’s nancial

resources into consideration and eliminating

poverty penalties, we also end indeterminate

punishment and related debt; individuals will

be relieved of criminal justice debt and related

incarceration that can extend for decades, if not

a lifetime.

ird, alternatives to monetary sanctions should

also be considered more seriously than they are,

especially where indigent persons are concerned.

Financial transactions are not the sole means by

which people can be made to account for their

actions and make victims whole. As indicated

earlier in the report, community service is an

available option in most states, although it is used

infrequently. When implemented judiciously,

however, this would seem to be a reasonable

substitute for monetary sanctions.

Fourth, jurisdictions should consider amnesty

for those who already hold debt. e evidence

provided here shows the questionable value of

pursuing debt from people unable to pay. Indeed,

when the cost and social harm of enforcing CJFO

collections is greater than the benet of (typically

partial) payment, there is a strong argument for

amnesty. Accounting for and excusing CJFO debt

Shackled to Debt: Criminal Justice Financial Obligations and the Barriers to Re-entry They Create | 15

not only allows people to exit the destructive cycle

of debt, warrants, arrests, court judgments and

incarceration, it also helps clear the prodigious

administrative backlog that typies U.S. court

systems.

Fifth, if any fees are collected, they should be

deposited into a trust account to be invested solely

in direct rehabilitation services for the supervised

population. is approach is similar to the inmate

welfare funds that are mandatory for jails and

prisons for fees collected from inmates, which can

only be expended on direct programs or services

that benet the inmate’s welfare. In a similar vein,

we oer a sixth recommendation that connects

criminal justice debt to the improved well-being

of those who are involved in the justice system. To

the extent that they invest in their own education

and vocational training, their fees might be

signicantly reduced or erased. In this way, the

government incentivizes behaviors it wishes to

see, with the prospect of reduced victimization

and improved public safety.

e second set of reforms addresses the criminal

justice system’s growing reliance on CJFOs for

their own operations and maintenance. The

criminal justice system is meant to serve the

general public. As such, it is logical and just to

insist that each of us bears this burden. Instead,

however, we increasingly require that people who

have had contact with the criminal justice system

pay a disproportionate share for its operation;

in so doing, we link the financial solvency of

the institution to law enforcement practices.

This incentivizes law enforcement to redirect

eorts away from critical, but less lucrative, law

enforcing toward those activities that, while

doing little to promote public safety, would

generate significant revenue for government

coers, thus putting revenue, not safety, rst.

To rectify this, we first propose that an

independent commission should be established

in each jurisdiction to determine the causes and

consequences of proposed increases to criminal

justice fees, nes, surcharges and the like. CJFOs

should not be allowed to increase in size and/or

number unless studies determine that changes

would not unduly burden those subject to

them. e institutional health and well-being of

criminal justice institutions should not hinge on

the amount and number of CJFOs assessed; this

is the purpose of general tax revenue.

Our second proposal is that the roles criminal

justice ocers — probation, parole and police

ocers — play should be limited to eorts that

increase public safety. Law enforcement ocers

should not be tasked with the responsibility to

collect debts. eir roles are already complicated

by what some consider to be mutually

incompatible demands — being advocate

and counselor as well as law enforcement and

disciplinarian. To add a debt collection function

to their roles forces officers to pit their own

jobs and that of the institution that employs

them against the eorts of individuals in their

charge at rehabilitation and successful re-entry.

Not only would this conict further complicate

what is already a dicult balancing act but, in

essence, it would also direct attention away from

the more important task of facilitating increased

public safety.

16 | New Thinking in Community Corrections

Endnotes

1. Boston, San Francisco and Minneapolis

were early adopters (Henry and Jacobs, 2007).

Currently, more than 100 cities and counties

nationwide have implemented “ban the box”

policies (Rodriguez and Avery, 2016).

2. In this report we do not consider child support.

Although child support often contributes to the

debilitating debt that justice-involved people

have, it has been treated extensively elsewhere.

(See Grall, 2003, and Cammett, 2006, for

discussions of child support debt as it relates to

justice-system involvement; also see Nagrecha

and Katzenstein, 2015; Thoennes, 2002; U.S.

Department of Health and Human Services, 2006;

and Pearson, 2004.)

3. See Garland (2001) for a full discussion of this

cultural shift.

4. User fees are commonly assessed at

preconviction; for instance, defendants can

be charged booking fees, application fees to

obtain a public defender, and jail fees for pretrial

detention. At sentencing, nes associated with

convictions are typically accompanied by

surcharges; the amount of restitution to victims

is determined; and fees mount up for court

costs, designated funds and reimbursement for

public defenders and prosecution. During jail

or prison stays, fees are routinely assessed for a

variety of programs and services, most commonly

for medical services (including prescriptions,

physician/nurse visits, dental care and eye care),

participation in work release programs, per diem

payments and telephone use. Among the CJFOs

added to the tab of probationers and parolees

are monthly fees for supervision (including

electronic monitoring) and administration

fees for the installation of monitoring devices,

drug testing, mandatory treatment, therapy

and classes. Further, at each stage of criminal

case processing, there are interest charges and

penalties for tardy payments, application fees

for payment plans, and fees for debt collection

services — all adding to the heavy weight of

accumulated debt placed on justice-involved

people, who are already disproportionately at a

disadvantage economically and educationally

(Bannon, Nagrecha and Diller, 2010).

5. Included are fees for crime victim assistance,

incarceration, DNA databanking, parole and

probation supervision, sex oender registration,

and supplemental payments to sex offender

victims.

6. Despite its “growing normativity” (Katzenstein

and Nagrecha, 2011), policies and practices

related to the assessment, administration

and collection of CJFOs are quite diverse.

Jurisdictions typically have dozens of statutes

mandating nes, fees and surcharges, but every

comparison of jurisdictions — federal versus

state, between states, between counties within

a single state, and even between courthouses —

reveals a substantial array of dierences.

Shackled to Debt: Criminal Justice Financial Obligations and the Barriers to Re-entry They Create | 17

7. Meredith and Morse (2015) illustrate this well

with case studies of Alabama and Tennessee.

8. ese data are from the Survey of Inmates in

State and Federal Correctional Facilities. The

authors make clear that these figures likely

underestimate the use of CJFOs because they

do not include those assessed by departments

of corrections, jails or other noncourt agencies

(Harris, Evans and Beckett, 2010).

9. In the federal system, more than $14 billion

in monetary penalties was assessed in fiscal

year 2014 for up to 96 percent of cases for some

offenses. In a study of CJFOs in 11 states, the

average amount of uncollected debt was $178

million per state (McLean and ompson, 2007).

California alone had $10.2 billion in outstanding

court-ordered debt at the end of 2012 (Taylor,

2014). As of 2010, Iowa and Arizona reported

unpaid court-ordered obligations on the order

of $533 million and $831 million, respectively.

Pennsylvania reported unpaid restitution of

$638 million. In Los Angeles County, the nes,

forfeitures and assessments related to 8,000

complaints led each week for failure to appear

exceeded $75 million in a single year. Finally, in

just one federal district in New York (southern

region), more than $270 million was owed for

criminal debts (U.S. Department of Justice, 2014).

10. Concern about this motivation prompted

the Conference of State Court Administrators

(n.d.) to assert that “[i]t is axiomatic that the core

functions of our government are supported from

basic and general tax revenues. Government

exists and operates for the common good based

upon a common will to be governed, and the

expense thereof is borne by general taxation of

the governed.”

11. African-Americans were 68 percent less likely

to have their cases dismissed by the court, at least

50 percent more likely to have their cases lead to

an arrest warrant, and accounted for 92 percent of

cases in which the court issued an arrest warrant

(U.S. Department of Justice, 2015).

12. ese are in conict to the extent that ocers’

advocacy cannot comfortably coexist with their

role as disciplinarians.

13. is is so despite a series of Supreme Court

rulings to the contrary: Bearden v. Georgia, 461

U.S. 660 (1983); Frazier v. Jordan, 457 F.2d 726 (5th

Cir. 1972); Tate v. Short, 401 U.S. 395 (1971); and

Williams v. Illinois, 399 U.S. 235 (1970).

14. In Franklin County, Ohio, for instance, the

payment plan fee was $25; in the Orleans district

in Louisiana, it was $100 (Bannon, Nagrecha and

Diller, 2010).

15. Economic sanctions had once been criticized

because they did not include penalties for

nonpayment (Petersilia and Turner, 1993; Langan,

1994; Wheeler et al., 1990).

18 | New Thinking in Community Corrections

16. In California, Florida, Louisiana, Michigan,

North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Texas and Virginia,

driver’s licenses are suspended if people fail to

make CJFO payments (Bannon, Nagrecha and

Diller, 2010).

17. In seven of the 15 states that Bannon and

colleagues (2010) studied, CJFOs must be paid o

before people regain their right to vote. According

to Meredith and Morse (2015), southern states are

almost three times more likely than non-southern

states to disenfranchise people because of CJFOs

(40 percent compared to 14 percent).

18. Case No. 4:15-cv-253, U.S. District Court,

Eastern District of Missouri.

19. “If a State determines a ne or restitution to

be the appropriate and adequate penalty for the

crime, it may not thereafter imprison a person

solely because he lacked the resources to pay

it. Williams v. Illinois, 399 U.S. 235; Tate v. Short,

401 U.S. 395. If the probationer has willfully

refused to pay the fine or restitution when he

has the resources to pay or has failed to make

sucient bona de eorts to seek employment

or borrow money to pay, the State is justied in

using imprisonment as a sanction to enforce

collection. But if the probationer has made all

reasonable bona de eorts to pay the ne and

yet cannot do so through no fault of his own, it

is fundamentally unfair to revoke probation

automatically without considering whether

adequate alternative methods of punishing the

probationer are available to meet the State’s

interest in punishment and deterrence.” 461

U.S. 660-661, http://supreme.justia.com/cases/

federal/us/461/660.

20. The federal statute, 18 U.S. Code § 3663A,

“Mandatory restitution to victims of certain

crimes,” lists the following oenses as requiring

mandatory restitution: crimes of violence,

property oenses (including oenses committed

by fraud or deceit), oenses related to tampering

with consumer products, and oenses relating

to the theft of medical products. Mandatory

restitution bars judges from considering a

defendant’s ability to pay when determining

restitution.

21. Collection rates are hampered by people’s

inability to pay, diculty in locating people over

time, and age of the debt.

22. See Vera Institute of Justice (1988) for a full

explanation of how this works.

23. The U.S. does have some experience with

day-fines. During the 1980s and 1990s when

some in the criminal justice community

sought alternative sanctions to incarceration,

several initiatives were launched to explore

the viability of proportional fines. The results

were largely promising. A RAND study of day-

nes in Arizona’s Maricopa County focused on

people convicted of felonies “with low need for

supervision and treatment.” It found that day-

nes successfully diverted people from standard

“supervision probation” and increased payment

Shackled to Debt: Criminal Justice Financial Obligations and the Barriers to Re-entry They Create | 19

without negative consequences in arrests and

technical violations (Turner and Greene, 1999).

Another study of the ecacy of day-nes in low-

level courts in Milwaukee and Staten Island found

similarly positive results (Greene and Worzella,

1992). In sum, these valuable experiences, drawn

from the European context and in parts of the U.S.

as well, provide reasons to be optimistic as they

indicate that by taking both oense severity and

ability to pay into account, the day-ne model

or an equivalent could help to address the most

pressing concerns regarding our current system

of CJFOs.

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Beckett, K., and Harris, A. 2011. “On Cash and

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Beckett, K., Harris, A., and Evans, H. 2008. e

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Author Note

Karin D. Martin is Assistant Professor of Public

Management at John Jay College of Criminal

Justice and e Graduate Center, City University

of New York.

Sandra Susan Smith is Assistant Professor of

Sociology at the University of California, Berkeley.

Wendy Still is the Chief Probation Officer in

Alameda County, California.

is report was prepared for Harvard Kennedy

School’s Executive Session on Community

Corrections, 2013 to 2016. We thank members

of the Session for constructive comments

and suggestions. We also thank Jasper Frank

and Kendra Bradner for very helpful research

assistance. Please direct correspondence to Karin

Martin (kamartin@jjay.cuny.edu) and Sandra

Smith (sandra_smith@berkeley.edu).

NCJ 249976

Members of the Executive Session on Community Corrections

Marc Levin, Policy Director, Right on Crime;

Director, Center for Effective Justice, Texas

Public Policy Foundation

Glenn E. Martin, President and Founder,

JustLeadershipUSA

Anne Milgram, Senior Fellow, New York

University School of Law

Jason Myers, Sheriff, Marion County

Sheriff’s Ofﬁce

Michael Nail, Commissioner, Georgia

Department of Community Supervision

James Pugel, Chief Deputy Sheriff,

Washington King County Sheriff’s

Department

Steven Raphael, Professor, Goldman

School of Public Policy, University of

California, Berkeley

Nancy Rodriguez, Director, National

Institute of Justice

Vincent N. Schiraldi, Senior Research

Fellow, Program in Criminal Justice Policy

and Management, Harvard Kennedy School

SandraSusan Smith, Associate Professor,

Department of Sociology, University of

California, Berkeley

Amy Solomon, Director of Policy, Ofﬁce

of Justice Programs, U.S. Department

of Justice; Executive Director, Federal

Interagency Reentry Council

Wendy S. Still, Chief Probation Ofﬁcer,

Alameda County, California

John Tilley, Secretary, Kentucky Justice

and Public Safety Cabinet

Steven W.Tompkins, Sheriff,

Massachusetts Suffolk County Sheriff’s

Department

Harold Dean Trulear, Director, Healing

Communities; Associate Professor of

Applied Theology, Howard University School

of Divinity

Vesla Weaver, Assistant Professor of

African American Studies and Political

Science, Yale University, Institution for

Social and Policy Studies

Bruce Western, Faculty Chair, Program in

Criminal Justice Policy and Management,

Harvard Kennedy School; Daniel and

Florence Guggenheim Professor of Criminal

Justice, Harvard University

John Wetzel, Secretary of Corrections,

Pennsylvania Department of Corrections

Ana Yáñez-Correa, Program Ofﬁcer for

Criminal Justice, Public Welfare Foundation

Molly Baldwin, Founder and CEO, Roca, Inc.

Kendra Bradner (Facilitator), Project

Coordinator, Program in Criminal Justice

Policy and Management, Harvard Kennedy

School

Barbara Broderick, Chief Probation Ofﬁcer,

Maricopa County Probation Adult Probation

Department

Douglas Burris, Chief Probation Ofﬁcer,

United States District Court, The Eastern

District of Missouri, Probation

John Chisholm, District Attorney,

Milwaukee County District Attorney’s Ofﬁce

George Gascón, District Attorney, San

Francisco District Attorney’s Ofﬁce

Adam Gelb, Director, Public Safety

Performance Project, The Pew Charitable

Trusts

Susan Herman, Deputy Commissioner for

Collaborative Policing, New York City Police

Department

Michael Jacobson, Director, Institute for

State and Local Governance; Professor,

Sociology Department, Graduate Center,

City University of New York

Sharon Keller, Presiding Judge, Texas

Court of Criminal Appeals

U.S. Department of Justice

Office of Justice Programs

National Institute of Justice

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