States Should Reduce or Eliminate Criminal Fines and Fees, Even Amid Challenging Fiscal Landscape

Over the past three years, states and local governments across the country, with both Republican- and Democratic-held legislatures, have taken important steps in undoing harmful criminal legal system-related fines and fees.^[1] These changes — which range from requiring courts to study the impact of criminal fines and fees to large-scale fee elimination — will mitigate the financial harm to people who come into contact with the criminal legal system and improve fairness and equity.

However, going into 2026, states face a difficult fiscal landscape. The reconciliation law passed by congressional Republicans last summer will increase costs on many states, particularly those that seek to mitigate the harm to their residents. These additional costs come amid slowing, or even declining, state revenue — in many states a result of large-scale tax cuts and depleted pandemic-related federal dollars.^[2] These federal cuts have heightened lawmakers’ anxiety about state budgets, and some may be tempted to turn back to criminal fines and fees to raise revenue.

This would be a mistake. State lawmakers should understand that revenue generated from criminal legal fines and fees is not robust or reliable enough to be an effective part of addressing upcoming fiscal challenges, and research has shown fines and fees to be remarkably inefficient and harmful ways to fund government.^[3]

Both state budgets and people who encounter the criminal legal system would be better off if states continue the momentum of the past years to right-size fines and eliminate fees, while pursuing robust, equitable, and stable revenue sources — such as higher taxes on the wealthy and corporations, who received the biggest benefits from the reconciliation tax law — to fund investments in public safety and other priorities.

For states lacking political will for fee elimination at this time, policymakers can take other steps, such as enacting laws that provide more transparency related to the imposition and collection of fines and fees in their states, ensuring that people with low incomes are not inequitably burdened by fees, and mitigating harmful fiscal incentives caused by fines- and fee-generated revenue.

Criminal Legal Fines and Fees Exploit Low-Income People, Deepen Racial Inequities in the Criminal Legal System, and Undermine Public Safety

Many states and localities charge fees at every step of the criminal legal process — from making low-income people facing criminal charges pay for the use of a public defender to the costs of probation monitoring. (See Figure 1.) An individual may owe hundreds of dollars for their interaction with the criminal legal system regardless of being found guilty of a crime.

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Even relatively small fee and fine amounts might force people to choose between paying off their criminal legal debt or meeting other basic needs. In a 2010 study, one interview participant reported that he would pay off his fines and fees by “rob[bing] Peter to pay Paul” – cutting back or not paying for medicine, food, rent, and other basic needs.^[4] Unexpected fines or criminal legal fees can be destabilizing to individuals and households, leading to challenges paying bills, defaults on debts, and declines in credit scores.^[5] And for those unable to pay, outstanding debt can result in garnished wages, driver’s license suspensions, and even arrest and jail time.^[6]

This problem can be especially acute for communities of color. Black, Latino, and Indigenous people face higher rates of criminal legal system engagement than white people. This is due to a constellation of discriminatory policies and practices, both historical and contemporary, including segregation, the over-policing of communities of color, and racial bias in the criminal legal system that leads to higher conviction rates and more severe punishments.^[7] Structural racism does not only increase the likelihood of front-end engagement with the criminal legal system; research has indicated that the racial makeup of communities also seems to have an effect on the propensity of local governments to impose criminal fines and fees. The Department of Justice’s Ferguson report indicates that cities with larger populations of Black residents and a disproportionately white police force levy fines at a higher per capita rate than cities with smaller populations of Black residents or cities with more racially representative policy forces.^[8]

These fines are deeply harmful, further entrench systemic racial bias into our criminal legal system, and they fundamentally undermine the ideas of justice and public safety. A 2018 study found that as a locality’s proportion of revenue derived from criminal legal fees and fines increased, clearance rates — that is, the percentage of reported crimes that law enforcement agencies solve — for violent and property crimes decreased. The authors theorized that as law enforcement agencies focused more on generating revenue from fines and fees, they neglected other aspects of their jobs more directly tied to public safety — this was especially true in smaller localities with fewer police officers.^[9] Alternatively, a survey of people in New Mexico who had interacted with the state’s criminal fine and fee system, either directly or via family members, found that 41 percent of respondents admitted that they had at some point committed a crime to pay off court-ordered fines and fees.^[10]

Several States Have Made Significant Progress Reducing Harmful Criminal Legal Fines and Fees

Fortunately, as lawmakers have become more aware of the damage these fees can inflict, many have engaged in some efforts to curb their use. These reforms have been bipartisan, taking place in states with both Republican- and Democrat-led legislatures. States have taken a variety of actions over the past few years to reduce reliance on fees. (See Figure 2 and Appendix Table 1.) These include:

• Eliminating fees in the adult criminal legal system: Several states have moved to limit fees applied in the criminal legal system. For example, in 2023, New Mexico eliminated criminal post-adjudication and bench warrant fees for adults.^[11] In Nevada, lawmakers eliminated fees for people in prison – removing the 25 percent “room and board” wage garnishment policy, removing medical co-pays, abolishing commissary mark-ups on hygiene items, and ensuring affordability for essential goods like menstrual products and toothpaste.^[12] In 2024, Delaware enacted a trio of bills that will eliminate a range of fees charged to people facing criminal charges or people on probation and will forgive unpaid balances.^[13] In May of 2025, Oklahoma eliminated a slew of fees, including a $300 per month electronic monitoring^[14] fee for people on probation or parole.^[15]
• Eliminating youth justice fees for children and young adults and their parents: In 2023, at least eight states took significant strides to limit fees and forgive court debt in their youth justice systems. Arizona and Illinois passed bills that prohibit courts from ordering children or their parents to pay any contribution for any part of court costs.^[16] In Montana, lawmakers passed a bill that forgave outstanding court debt held by children or their parents at the time of the bill’s enactment.^[17] Texas eliminated the remaining juvenile court fees levied against children.^[18] And Michigan lawmakers eliminated nearly all fines, fees, and cost reimbursement requirements for kids and their parents in juvenile court proceedings.^[19]
• Waiving fines and fees for people unable to pay: Short of eliminating fees and forgiving unpaid court debt, some states have explored ways to ensure that people with low incomes can have their fees waived. In 2023, Oklahoma lawmakers expanded hardship waivers for people facing criminal charges for all or part of the amount they may owe, updating the list of factors that the court can consider when determining if a person is able to pay their court obligations.^[20] Lawmakers in California passed a bill that allows courts to assess a person’s ability to pay for treatment and sets up a sliding fee scale, offering fee relief if needed in non-violent drug possession cases.^[21] In 2024, policymakers in Utah passed legislation that allows the court to waive filing fees for expungement petitions for people financially unable to pay the fees.^[22] During the 2025 legislative session, Oregon lawmakers passed two relevant bills: the first created a clear process that courts must follow when someone asks to have their fines and fees reduced or cancelled and provided guidance on what factors courts must consider. The second automatically eliminated outstanding court debt for people who were convicted of municipal marijuana violations prior to 2015.^[23]
• Loosening penalties and restrictions for people with outstanding court debt: Lawmakers have taken steps in recent years to minimize the additional punishments and restrictions people face when they have outstanding debt balances that they are unable to pay off quickly. A 2024 Maryland law prevents making repayment of outstanding court fees or other court costs a precondition for expunging records of non-violent crimes.^[24] Minnesota made retroactive a 2021 law that ended driver’s license suspensions for unpaid fines, restoring licenses suspended pre-2021.^[25] In 2024, Oklahoma lawmakers passed a bill stipulating that a person arrested for unpaid court costs must be released within 72 hours or sooner if they prove they’ve paid at least $100 or if the court holds a hearing to review their payment status.^[26] In 2025, Virginia lawmakers passed a bill that establishes a minimum monthly payment of $25 for all court jurisdictions and allows people with demonstrated financial hardship to pay lower monthly minimums.^[27]
• Requiring data collection or studies of criminal legal fines and fees: Several states have also taken steps to expand the range of information available related to the imposition and collection of criminal fines and fees. Most of these studies are one time, but in 2023, lawmakers in Utah passed a law that requires the Utah Judicial Council – a government body with authority over the state’s court system — to publish an annual report that includes a range of details related to the use of fees across the state. The council must also include justification for any new fees or fee changes it recommends and provide details on where the revenue will go.^[28] In the 2024 legislative session, lawmakers in Michigan passed a bill that requires the state’s supreme court to evaluate trial court costs and revenue sources, create and propose a standardized trial court fee schedule, design and recommend a system for collecting trial court debts, and develop legislative proposals to reform trial court funding.^[29]

Relevant Enacted Fines/Fees Legislation 2023, 2024 & 2025

Lawmakers Should Raise Sustainable Revenue Through Taxes, Not Unreliable and Inefficient Criminal Fines and Fees

Bills passed in recent years have demonstrated the willingness of lawmakers across the ideological spectrum to address harmful fines and fees policies. Many of these policy improvements have taken place in a friendly fiscal environment where growing state revenues and elevated federal funds reduced concerns about generating revenue to fund public safety and other investments. The fiscal environment is no longer as rosy, given new costs many states will face from the Republican megabill and stagnating or declining state revenues. But state lawmakers should not abandon positive movement on fines and fees in the face of budget challenges. Fines and fees usually make up less than 1 percent of state and local budgets, and they are notoriously difficult to collect – with some localities even losing money. A real solution to address states’ upcoming fiscal challenges is to equitably raise revenue through taxes, while alleviating the disproportionate burden of fines and fees on low-income people.

Republican Megabill and Costly State Policies Are Creating Budgetary Challenges

The recently passed Republican megabill makes enormous cuts to food assistance and health care in part by shifting new costs onto state and local governments. This will require states to, for the first time, absorb a large portion of SNAP benefit costs; increase states’ portion of SNAP administrative costs; restrict how states can fund their Medicaid programs; and likely generate significant indirect costs over time, such as more people seeking uncompensated care after losing affordable health coverage. States that backfill for the federal cuts and try to reduce the harm from the megabill — for example, by implementing new, harsh work requirements in ways that protect more people’s health coverage — will face higher costs.^[30] At the same time, states are facing federal funding cuts in other areas, through the federal appropriations process and executive actions. This includes the withholding of disaster aid, leaving some states with large costs that traditionally have been covered by federal disaster funding.

These costs will be difficult for many states in light of their worsening fiscal conditions — many states are forecasting flat or declining revenue in upcoming years.^[31] This trend is driven in large part by costly and regressive income tax cuts that state lawmakers have enacted across the country over the past five years. Additionally, a raft of policies is weakening revenue for public education by shifting public dollars to new private school voucher programs and by cutting property taxes. States and localities also no longer have access to the sizable and now-expired federal fiscal aid that was provided during the pandemic and in its aftermath, which helped fuel strong post-pandemic economic growth and temporary budget surpluses in many states. These tax cuts will cost states billions over the next several years.^[32]

Fines and Fees Are Not an Effective Revenue Source; States Should Raise Revenue Through Fair Taxes

Despite these pressures, it is important for state lawmakers to understand that revenue generated from criminal legal fines and fees is not typically robust or reliable enough to be an effective part of addressing upcoming fiscal challenges. Fines and fees revenue often reflect a very small portion of state or local revenue – constituting less than 1 percent of all state and local government revenue – and outstanding balances are notoriously difficult to collect.^[33] One study which examined ten counties across Texas, Florida, and New Mexico found that some counties spend over 40 cents for every dollar they raised in fees and fines for in-court hearings and jail costs – meaning collections costs alone were eating up nearly half of all the money these counties were able to recoup. One county in New Mexico was, in fact, losing money on its efforts to collect outstanding fees and fines.^[34] Another study focused on fees and collection in New Orleans found that in 2015, the city spent more incarcerating individuals who had failed to pay debt than they collected in charges.^[35]

Part of the reason for such high inefficiency is because many individuals facing moderate or large amounts of fines and fees simply do not have the money to pay them. Judges rarely take the time to discern a person’s ability to pay and, in turn, fines and fees go unpaid.^[36] And most estimates of how costly it is to collect fines and fees revenue are likely to be on the conservative end, as costs incurred by state and local government in the process of collection are spread across multiple different agencies and often poorly tracked, making it difficult for researchers to collect and analyze the appropriate data.^[37]

States would be much better off raising revenue via traditional revenue sources such as income (both personal and corporate), sales and, for local governments, property taxes. State lawmakers have a range of options available to ensure adequate revenue is raised without jeopardizing the well-being of low- and middle-income individuals and families. States can pursue revenue solutions including right-sizing taxes on wealthy corporations and households, scrutinizing costly economic development incentives and other wasteful tax breaks, modernizing state sales taxes to ensure that goods and services are treated equally, and easing restrictions on local governments’ ability to raise revenue via property taxes.^[38]

Short of Eliminating Fines and Fees, Policymakers Can Take Steps to Reduce Harm

Many states have yet to fully embrace eliminating criminal legal fees or tying fines to income and ability to pay, despite the significant benefits such reforms would bring to individuals and communities. While these approaches are the most effective and preferred policies to address harmful fines and fees, lawmakers can make progress by pursuing targeted changes that increase our understanding of the pervasiveness and impact of fines and fees, reduce financial hardship for those least able to pay, and address fiscal incentives that undermine public safety and fairness. States can:

• Enact laws requiring more detailed data collection and reporting on the prevalence and impact of fines and fees. States do a varied job of tracking and analyzing the fees they impose, how much revenue is generated from fines and fees, the true cost of collecting outstanding court debt, where those fines and fees revenues ultimately end up, and how reliant state or local governments are on those resources. In turn, states have very poor insight into how individuals and communities fare when fines and fees are imposed. States can pass laws that require courts to develop publicly accessible statewide databases that include information on how much in fines and fees has been assessed and paid, demographic information about who has been assessed fines and fees, outstanding debt balances, and where revenue is going.

• Ensure that laws prevent low-income individuals from paying fees by requiring ability-to-pay hearings. To protect against assessing fines and charging fees that individuals cannot afford, states should more aggressively consider each person’s economic status. The National Center for Access to Justice at Fordham Law School has identified a list of best practices that states can adopt and clarify to ensure that individuals with low incomes are not unjustly burdened with excessive fines and fees.^[39] These best policies include:
  • Giving judges the necessary discretion to waive or modify fines and fees based on ability to pay,
  • Requiring courts to conduct ability-to-pay determinations any time fines or fees are imposed,
  • Providing judges with clear guidance on how ability to pay should be determined,
  • Clarifying standards that define when someone is presumed to be indigent,
  • Ensuring individuals can choose to pay fines and fees on a payment plan when needed,
  • Requiring courts to prove that a person's failure to pay a fine or fee is intentional before imposing further punishments, and
  • Taking steps to encourage or require that fines be right-sized and scaled according to a person’s income.
• Minimize harmful incentives by severing the connection between revenue raising and resource allocation. Courts and law enforcement agencies should be focused on administering justice, maintaining the law, and ensuring the safety of residents. Instead, they can face distorted incentives for revenue raising through fines and fees that lead to sub-optimal outcomes. For example, research indicates that localities facing budget shortfalls may increase enforcement of traffic violations or may more heavily enforce laws for the sole purpose of producing additional revenue.^[40] One approach states could take to disrupt this incentive is to remit local revenues generated by criminal fines and fees to the state and then reallocate revenue back to local governments based on a predetermined formula. While this would require some localities to adjust their budgets, especially those most reliant on such revenues, redistributing revenues generated from fines and fees would remove the direct revenue incentive tied to ensnaring more people in the criminal legal system.^[41]

Appendix