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BRENNAN
CENTER
F JUSTICE
The Honorable Brian Schatz
United States Senate
The Honorable Jerrold Nadler
U.S. House of Representatives
March 3, 2020
Re: Brennan Center Support for the State Justice Improvement Act
Dear Senator Schatz and Chairman Nadler,
The Brennan Center forJustice at NYU School of Law welcomes the introduction of the State Justice
Improvement Act of 2020, sponsored by your offices, as an important step toward a fairer and more
efficient criminal justice system. We are pleased to endorse this legislation.
Today, courts across the country rely on fees and fines -respectively, court costs charged to people
who pass through criminal courts, and financial penalties imposed after conviction - to fund their
daily operations.' The consequences are devastating. Fees and fines often turn into criminal justice
debt, which exacerbates poverty and inequality for the impacted individuals and their families. These
practices also jeopardize reentry, creating new pathways to prison.2 And all too often they are the
product of racially discriminatory policing patterns. In addition to entrenching poverty and inequality,
recent Brennan Center research documents that raising revenue through fees and fines is significantly
less efficient than general taxation.'
This bill offers a critical way for the federal government to provide vital assistance to states. Training
and technical assistance grants would help state and local systems move towards best practices,
reducing the devastating and inequitable consequences related to how fees and fines are assessed. The
1 MATTHEW MENENDEZ ET AL., BRENNAN CTR. FORJUSTICE, THE STEEP COSTS OF CRIMINALJUSTICE FEES AND FINES 7 (2019),
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2 Id. at 20 (recounting how one speeding ticket ballooned to $1,800 in debt due to additional fees, impeding the recipient's ability to
find a job, and arguing that criminal justice debt fuel[s] a cycle that impedes reentry).
3 Id. at 13 (noting Ferguson, Mo., as one prominent example of this trend).
4 See id. at 9 (it costs jurisdictions, on average, 121 times more to collect criminal fees and fines - even without including some of
those costs - than it costs the IRS to gather taxes (emphasis in original)).
Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law
120 Broadway, Suite 1750 New York, NY 10271](ViewImageLocal?handle=hein.brennan/bcjsjim0001&div=1&collection=&method=preview&ext=.png&size=3)