Session: How Criminal Justice Policy Pits Agencies Against Individuals on Supervision (Society for Social Work and Research 30th Annual Conference Anniversary)

Revenue-driven justice is a term to describe the practice of assessing fines and fees to justice-involved individuals and using those monies to fund a substantial portion of a criminal justice agency's budget. When fines and fees fund a significant portion of an agency's operational costs, there is potential for fiscal concerns to influence decision-making related to accommodating financial hardship for justice-involved individuals. In some jurisdictions, monetary sanctions are included in the court-ordered conditions of community supervision. As a result, clients' supervision can be revoked if they fall behind in, or miss, a payment. Further, these debts can grow substantially through late fees and high interest rates and may also be sent to collection agencies. Much of the existing research examining the use of fees within supervision focuses on the role of officer discretion in fee collection, modification, and waiver. This research has examined the role of discretion on supervisee outcomes, including financial implications, disproportionate impacts by race and ethnicity, and the likelihood of revocation. Less evidence focuses on the use of discretion at the agency level. Discretion at the organizational level is critical to examine due to complex and highly variable nature of probation structure. The gap in research examining organizational discretion in the implementation of fees is problematic given the research on mass probation and the sweeping impacts on communities who are disproportionately subject to the negative impacts associated with criminal legal system involvement. This symposium reports on three papers associated with the National Study on the Impact of Supervision Fees on Probation Agency Operations funded by the National Institute of Corrections. The study aimed to: 1) Explore the alignment between community supervision mission statements and fee collection policies and practices; 2) Characterize the formal and informal structures that determine how fees are collected, modified, and disbursed; and 3) Describe the process for states that have eliminated fee collection. Paper 1 details the results from a content analysis of community supervision mission statements to examine the intention of agencies and its corresponding alignment with their fee practices. Paper 2 describes the results from a mixed methods analysis of 12 interviews and administrative data from 50 states to examine both the formal and informal structures that determine how fees are collected and the policies, practices, and organizational pressures that influence who is more likely to have fees modified. The third paper examines the processes whereby states have abolished fees and impact at both the organizational and individual levels. At the close of these presentations, the discussant will provide comments, draw on the themes prevalent across studies, and discuss the impact of the collection of fees for staff and the impact on system involved individuals.