Examining how criminal justice fees — and their removal — affect people’s assets and chances of success on probation.

In the U.S., criminal courts have imposed increasingly steep monetary sanctions on defendants.  These sanctions include administrative fees that are intended to raise revenue by shifting costs from taxpayers to “users” of the criminal justice system.  As part of a ‘debt-free justice’ movement, policymakers have recommended the elimination of such fees.

To inform this movement, we are partnering with Alameda County Probation and the California Policy Lab to conduct a mixed-methods study. We are estimating the causal relationship between administrative fees, and probationers’ financial health and chances of success on probation – and the impact of Alameda County’s fee repeal on those outcomes.