Fellows Blog: Fines & Fees Reform

By: Merrilee Montgomery

I joined Louisiana Progress as a College Fellow in the summer of 2021. During the 2021-2022 school year, leading up to the 2022 Legislative Session, I focused on super PAC campaign funding, legislator pay, and digital advertisements in election campaigns. When the Louisiana Progress College Fellows regrouped after the 2022 session, I was excited to be reassigned to study the role of money in the criminal justice system, after spending the previous year studying money in election campaigns. 

During the Fall of 2022, I read many reports and news stories about the role of fines and fees in the criminal justice system, and the way that fines and fees create a disparate burden on low income communities. These reports quoted statistics from both original research and from other organizations, as well as accounts of personal experiences with the criminal justice system. I concluded that, to make the strongest argument for any fines and fees reform in the 2023 Legislative session, Louisiana Progress should be able to provide the most accurate and complete statistics on the collection and disbursement of fines and fees. Personal accounts are easy to dismiss because they require genuine concern about the person providing the account; and that is not always guaranteed. 

Around October of 2022, Louisiana Progress’s Executive Director, Peter Robins-Brown, asked me to look at reports from local governments that were provided to the Louisiana Legislative Auditor in response to Act 87 of the 2021 legislative session. Those reports were supposed to provide deeper insight into how much money local governments were collecting in fines and fees, and how they were using that money. I tried to read through these reports to understand the movement of fines and fees from a citizen to different state organs. However, the reports were not consistent in classifying disbursements or in naming the entities to which disbursements were sent. These reports listed disbursements from sources not reported in collections. I eventually decided that, in order to wrap my mind around the movement of fines and fees money around Louisiana, I needed to put all the reports in some common form. 

Over the 2022 Christmas break, I compiled the fines and fees collection and disbursement data into one spreadsheet. I analyzed and visualized this data and created a dashboard to share this data with the hopes that other people who do not have the time to read reports from 63 parishes could see the inconsistencies in reporting, and the variation in collection and spending. I hoped to further Louisiana Progress’s anti-poverty-through-decriminalization agenda by providing supporting statistics and by understanding the details of fines and fees circulation in Louisiana

In January 2023, I did an anti-racism training that identified “worship of the written word” as a pillar of White Supremacy, or an attitude that can easily be co-opted to support White Supremacy. I did not understand at the time how written documentation of a phenomenon or event could serve White Supremacy. After all, isn’t knowledge power and education a privilege? After seeing the amount of research and thought that goes into crafting Louisiana’s legal code, I think I understand what that training was describing.

Although our College Fellows term is only 12 weeks, the legal calendar goes from session to session, and the work we do as College Fellows falls into this rhythm. We spend the offseason researching issues, crafting solutions, building coalitions, and finding bill sponsors. At first glance, the outcomes of the session depend on the effort that legislators and advocacy groups put into their bills and causes in the offseason. In reality, the research can direct our bills and our work, but it doesn’t get legislation passed. 

The power of the written word–our codified knowledge–breaks down when you can’t appeal to the emotions of the people who possess power. Opposing statistics have been cited on the same issue. Five minutes of proponent testimony can beat two hours of opposing testimony, and vice versa. I’ve learned that policy is a strange, semi-opaque veneer that is used to codify and provide legitimacy to different peoples’ realities and experiences. Policy is simply layered over reality to preserve and legitimize it.

For example, we did monumental research and negotiation for House Bill 422 to lower the Office of Debt Recovery’s (ODR) collection fee from 25% to 15%. The bill acknowledged the reality that the current 25% increase stacked on top of debts referred to ODR is a ridiculous and sometimes insurmountable burden on the people who bear the debt. Yet, the bill died in a House committee. This reality did not receive that veneer of legal recognition. In such a way, written words are just the realities that have been given legitimacy. Some bills are not passed, some books are not published, some experiences are not recorded, some histories are hidden. These are all realities that wither out of public view, without receiving the validation provided by the written word and record. 

I spent much of the offseason researching costs and financial flows associated with the criminal justice system. I balked at the inconsistent reporting and inaccessibility of reports. It seems inane to argue based on narratives alone. Data or the “written word” is needed to legitimize people’s experience–especially if we want to help publicize the experiences of groups that have historically been ignored. You must prove new discoveries, even if the “discovery” is subjective. Columbus’s “discovery” was not really of a “new” land, but of a Native people’s history, culture, and community knowledge.

At this systematic disadvantage, out-maneuvering our opposition requires some feat of argument that I am always excited to see Louisiana Progress and our allies succeed at. Some part of me wants to rely on attrition. Many of the legislators that oppose us are old, and part of me thinks that some attitudes will just age out by generation. At the same time, we know that power structures will reproduce themselves and evolve with time. I may outlive some of the people on the other side of the table; however, I will not outlive the ideas they represent. 

Although our advocacy work can feel cyclical and up-hill, I have enjoyed the last year of research, brainstorming, and running around the Capitol. I am excited by Louisiana Progress’s successes and accomplishments during this Legislative Session, and I have learned as much about our society from the bills that failed as I did from the ones that passed.