By Caroline Boras
A life behind bars is not an easy one, and it’s made much harder when inmates face the burden of paying off debt.
The Code of Virginia affords the court system a little-known way to collect fees from anyone using it, from people fighting parking tickets to those involved in criminal cases and facing imprisonment.
The Rockbridge Court civil fee schedule is the breakdown of how much civil litigation costs and how the revenue from fees is used. Fees contribute to legal aid, the court’s technology fund and even to courthouse heating, cooling and construction.
Instead of receiving funding from all taxpayers, courts are increasingly relying on this hidden user tax.
“Court fees have, nationwide, started to account for a larger and larger proportion of the support for courts,” said Kelly Brotzman, a visiting assistant professor in Washington and Lee University’s Shepherd Poverty Program. “The actual public funding of courts is sort of gradually eroding and that’s being supplemented with fees that are being collected from litigants, both plaintiffs and defendants.”
Brotzman worries that this gives police an incentive to pick up people on simple infractions, since appearing for something like a ticket for a broken tail light can cost about $70, even if the ticket is dismissed in court.
These fees are a nuisance in civil matters, but are worse within the criminal justice system. They can lead to a cycle of imprisonment, release and imprisonment again.
The highest charge for a civil case at the Rockbridge County Courthouse is about $345, according to its fee schedule. No schedule for criminal fees was provided, but Brotzman said they can add up to thousands of dollars. If people involved in criminal trials can’t afford to pay their fees, they begin to build up criminal justice debt, which collects interest.
The cycle begins when people cannot afford to pay off the criminal justice debt and are convicted of a crime. Opportunities for prisoners to earn money are limited. Those who qualify for work release make about 20 cents an hour, said Brotzman.
Superintendent of the Rockbridge Regional Jail John Higgins is in charge of managing work release for the prisoners. He said former Presiding Judge Michael Irvine made sure that all of the money made from work release went directly to paying court fees.
Rockbridge Regional Jail is generally for people with shorter sentences.
“If you’re [in prison] for 10 years or 20 years, you can come out debt-free,” Brotzman said. “But most of them come out with some criminal justice debt.”
There just isn’t enough time for prisoners to make enough money on work release to pay off their court fees.
Brotzman said that in an ideal world, part of the money made at work release would go into savings, and another part would go to pay off the fees. Failure to pay can lead to re-incarceration.
It is a cycle that has not gained much attention. The problem is that everyone who has to pay is already entangled in court cases with different levels of severity.
There is not much to be done at the local level. Commonwealth’s Attorney Chris Billias said he has “absolutely no control over court fees.” All of the power belongs to the state.