Washington courts need a new funding mechanism. This is according to a recent Washington State Institute for Public Policy (WSIPP) report on the inefficiencies of relying on monetary sanctions as a source of funding for public services.

The Washington state government sorely underfunds its court system. In fact, Washington is one of only eleven states where courts are primarily funded by local governments, rather than relying on state funding. This leaves courts, especially in smaller counties with less resources, scrambling to find adequate funding, and often opting to rely on the use of fines and fees to make up the difference. On top of being an unreliable source of funding for our courts, this practice harms local communities and drains the resources of people already facing barriers to economic stability after re-entry. In particular, due to over policing of communities of color, and racial bias in the criminal legal system, fines and fees drain resources from Black and Indigenous communities and other communities of color, contributing to economic inequity.

What are monetary sanctions, and who do they harm the most?

While moving through the criminal legal system, people are often assessed fines, fees, and restitution costs, collectively referred to as Legal Financial Obligations (LFOS), or monetary sanctions.

• Fines are amounts people are required to pay because of a criminal charge
• Fees are amounts people are required to pay for use of court and legal services (i.e. DNA testing, public defenders, and jury trials)
• Restitution is an amount people are required to pay due to damages to a person or entity (i.e. insurance company, business, government)

A brief history of criminal legal debt

In the United States, assessing legal financial obligations (LFOs) grew much more common alongside the War on Drugs and expansion of mass incarceration in the 1980s. As the size of the U.S. criminal legal system grew, the costs associated with operating it grew, and courts levied LFOs as a tool to recoup court costs. However, the majority of people convicted of offenses in courts are living on low incomes – meaning that this funding scheme exploits people with the least to fund our courts. When families are already struggling to put food on the table, infractions as minor as a speeding ticket can snowball into additional charges and a cycle of debt. Without adequate state funding, courts impose significant monetary sanctions, often reaping minimal revenue. If the legislature fully funded courts in Washington, courts would not have to rely on revenue from people with little to no income.

Data shows that monetary sanctions are a harmful and ineffective revenue source

At the end of 2022, the Washington State Institute for Public Policy (WSIPP) released a report on LFO data across the state. WSIPP used data from the State Auditor’s Office to show how little revenue monetary sanctions generate*. The data reveals additional shortcomings of LFO revenue as a source of funding for courts. Namely, while every county levied millions in fines and fees from 2014-2021, in all but six counties, less than 40% of LFOs assessed were repaid. Courts across Washington allocate significant resources to recoup monetary sanctions, however because most people charged are living on low incomes, they do not have the ability to repay LFO debts.

Not only are LFOs an inequitable and harmful revenue source, overburdening people living on low incomes, they are also a highly inefficient revenue source. While in every county, millions of dollars in fines and fees are levied on people impacted by the carceral system, very little is recouped by the court due to people’s inability to pay. At most, collected LFO revenue makes up 16% of a county’s court spending. However, in many counties, LFO revenues equate to less than 5% of a county’s court spending. Put differently, on average in 2020, counties spent about 36 times more on court services than the total amount collected from monetary sanctions.

Some argue that eliminating LFOs, and their revenue, would be detrimental to courts’ funding  – but the data begs to differ. Instead, oftentimes courts spend more to collect LFOs than they receive in LFO revenue, although identifying the exact amount courts and clerks spend to collect LFOs is poorly documented and difficult to determine.

You can see a county breakdown of total court spending compared to collections from monetary sanctions below.

Monetary sanctions in Washington state are a harmful and ineffective revenue source. Courts’ overreliance on local funding sources results in a dependence on monetary sanctions to fund court services. However, most often, individuals are unable to repay the debts the courts assess.

A state funded court system would ease the burden on people struggling to make ends meet while they rebuild their lives, and on county governments struggling to run a fair and efficient court system. This would result in millions of dollars remaining in the communities that most need public investment and would allow more individuals and families to meet their basic needs.

*A note about the data: The data referenced throughout this blog post can be found in Appendix II of the WSIPP Final Report. Multiple jurisdictions across various years either did not report LFO data or indicated that the data was unavailable. Pierce County did not report any LFO data. Other jurisdictions are missing miscellaneous years or court levels’ data. To see a comprehensive record of the courts’ LFO data, please refer to the WSIPP report.