on behalf of my colleagues at the hamilton project, welcome to today's forum, which as you know, is the economics of bail, fines, and fees in the criminal justice system. in 2008, about two years after the beginning of the hamilton project, we had our first forum on criminal justice reform. we came to the topic, because we have been very focused on urban poverty. the poverty that has replicated itself through generations. but then, we realize that there is a criminal justice component to this, in a very serious, justice component, and that led us to the recognition, that, the criminal justice system was exacerbating the poverty problems that we are focused on. it also led us to recognize the enormous dysfunction of our criminal justice system. which is excessive as you all know, in many respects, and the numbers of people incarcerated about six times the average, of the developed countries. the sentences that are too long, parole and probation, that is too rigid, and very important, inadequate vibration that we give to people in prison, but life after prison, and the support that we give after they have been released. one thing that struck me in that first hamilton project forum, was that people in the 2008 module, people would come from all over the country, practitioners, policy analysts, public officials, when i asked why they had come, they said this is the, first opportunity they had had to discuss these subjects with a dc platform, and of course that is changed, there is to focus and washington, at that time, there was not and this was very early in the process, also, people said to me, this was the first time they had been involved in a focus on these issues that was from economic, or through an economic lens, which was very much the focus of the hamilton project. we have had several, more on this topic since, and there certainly has been a lot of progress, on the one hand, but a vast amount remains to be done. in 2016, i went to san quentin. i invited to give a ted x talk. and, the experience crystallized for me, a comment, that one of the people in prison made to me, registered and stayed with me ever since, which is, none of us, none of them, but also none of us, should be judged by the worst thing we've ever done. to the people i had met at san quentin, they are on parole now, and i stayed in touch with. who lunch with one of them, i guess it was two, three weeks ago., he was telling me how inadequate the preparation had been both while he was in prison, and how inadequate the support was now, for reentering mainstream society, and mainstream economy. although he himself was actually doing quite well and an extraordinarily impressive individual. the context of criminal justice , we're going to focus today as i mentioned a moment ago, on bail, fines, and fees, including in fees, restitution. now, as all of us know, as all of you know, enormous inequities in our criminal justice system, and with expect to focus, or focusing on bail for the moment, if you are accused, and you can afford to post dale, you do not go to jail. if you are accused, and you do not have a financial resources to provide bill, to go to jail. and any given day, and estimated there are about a half 1 million people, in jail, because of the inability to provide bail. going to jail is not only in itself, obviously, a very difficult experience, but it has another consequence: some number of those who go to jail, plead guilty, even though they are innocent, because, you get time served or probation. and the problem there, is they have a criminal record, and that then adversely affects them as they seek employment, subsequent to that experience. that cost them, are obviously enormous, but the cost to our society and our economy are also very great. we are also going to focus on fines and fees, including restitution. and, these fees, and the debt that is incurred, follow people from the time they leave prison for the rest of their, well, their lives until they can afford to pay them, and very often for the people, paying off these fees, that debt, in the criminal justice system is very difficult, limits job prospects and it really undermines their effort to get back into our society. two people i had lunch, or knowledge, had lunch with one of them, and i met with the other, to people i met, who are now on parole from san quentin have respectively 8000 and $3000 of debt, and for those people in that situation, that is a lot of money. it is been estimated that the cumulative debt incurred to the criminal justice system is somewhere around hundred and $24 billion, as of the fiscal year of 2017. another topic we are looking at today, is the use of fees and fines, created by the criminal justice system, is a budgetary measure, which then distorts the conduct of the criminal justice process. discussed all of this, we are deeply appreciative of having with us, highly experienced and deeply knowledgeable participants, and panels, and authors of our papers, in keeping with the practices of the met hamilton project, i will not introduce them, but at this point will be to just our moderate appeared just say it is remarkable group of people that we are very fortunate, all of us are very fortunate to have them with us. our first panel will be moderated by ryan on the policy director, of the hamilton project, and in economics studies fellow, the brookins's did institute, he will be discussing policy options, to reduce the fee and finds, and then we will have the case, for reforming, or illuminating cash bail, moderated by maia wiley, a legal analyst for nbc news, and msnbc, msnbc. and henry cohen. professor of urban policy in management commencing vice president for social justice of the new school, but a lot of times for one person. but we are delighted to have her. let me say, before i conclude, that we are very fortunate that the hamilton product has terrific, i mentioned ryan already our policy director who is deeply resourceful and knowledgeable, my other respected and outstanding director of adams hamilton project, and our highly effective managing director, kristin mcintosh, we also have a remarkable staff, without whose work we could not accomplish any of what we do. and, with that me to the panel, form over to the first panel, thank you all. >> [ applause ] -- >> good morning, i am ryan and, the policy director for the hamilton project, i will be a moderator for this panel, policy options to reform the use of -- fines, fees, and i think we have a really terrific panel, i am really excited to talk to them about all of these issues. you can see their full bios, and the agenda, but i will give you a quick title for each of them. so, directly to my left, i have kristin clark, the president and executive director of the lawyers committee for civil rights under law, next, we have jeremy travis, who is executive vice president of criminal justice at arnold ventures. next, we have daniel allen, who is james cohen diversity professor, and director of the edmund j lipsey center for ethics at harvard university. next to her we have beth cogan, who is professor of law at ucla, and the author of one of the proposals that we will be discussing today. and finally, we have michael michalski, who is associate professor of economics at clemson university, and the author of a second proposal, that we will be discussing today. so, i will just take a few quick words about the scope for this discussion on this panel. and, we are here to talk about fines, fees, and forfeiture, in part, because our criminal justice system is making more and more use of them overtime. where once monetary sanctions were really matter of fines, specifically designed to deter crime, and to punish it, now, we see a much larger role for fees and for forfeitures, as well, more than half the people in prison have incurred fees, with smaller action subject to fines and restitution, in addition. and, we see many local jurisdictions raising a lot of revenue from these engines, the top 5% actually offset about half of their criminal justice expenditures with these revenues. so, those patterns, and plenty of other interesting evidence, you can find in the hamilton project nine facts about monetary sanctions, which, if you have not already grabbed, you can get outside. and then, so, what we want to talk about, is the set of reform options, that this evidence base prompts. and, i think that is driven by this growing research literature, that documents the customer that the sanctions imposed on people with criminal records, but also, documents the, in which the system is not always effective at achieving its own goals. so, researchers have learned how law enforcement behavior, can be distorted by the incentive to acquire and retain kernel justice revenues from sanctions, and we're going to talk about what can be done to simultaneously achieve objectives like public safety, while minimizing the harm to people with criminal records. so, with that, we will get started in a moment, i want to remind you, that we have a q&a process, that is a little different here, so, we will be passing around notecards, on which you can write any questions you have, those will be passed up to me, and we will have a q&a period at the end. but, first, what i would like to do, is turn to one of our authors, michael michalski, and, just ask him to kind of describe the challenge, that he is addressing in his proposal, so, you are focusing on realigning the incentives of law-enforcement, can you just tell us a little bit of the problems that motivated you to write?>> let a little public finance context, several local governments, raising debt is hard, raising taxes is even harder, if they do manage to raise taxes, someone is probably going to lose an election, or, your tax base may just decide to live somewhere else. so, facing those constraints, with a lot of local governments have elected to do, is transform their local law enforcement, into an effectively regressive tax system, and this, this strategy has spread across the country. is becoming more and more common, living for a lot of us, when we put the image in our head, of revenue driven law enforcement, we think immediately, of speed traps, we think of, nuisances, parking tickets, and, but, if you look at the growing body of literature, and professor cogan's part of this, these are not nuisance fines and fees, these are often financially crippling, they are sizable enough that people are being incarcerated for failure to remake payment. and furthermore, it is extended beyond citations now. we are seeing correlations between criminal arrests, especially criminal arrests that can lead to property seizure. so, no, we're talking about a system that is both financially harmful, but is applying this criminal stigma to someone for the rest of their life. and furthermore, it is part of a system that we are seeing a lot of systematic -- so, when we see a correlation, between increases in arrests, almost exclusively seeing that for a minority orestes, we see essentially no marginal correlation for white arrest rates. and, you know, statistics can seem a little anodyne, and maybe that is sometimes why this can fly below the radar, but, the report that the department of justice issued, on the muniz ability in ferguson missouri, in the wake of that tragedy, presented such a stark image, just irrefutable evidence, of the municipality where, the criminal justice system had become systematically biased against low income african-americans, as a fiscal strategy. and, when you combine that fiscal strategy, with law enforcement, creating this incredible amount of collateral damage, in pursuit, from a public finance point of view, which would seem like a relatively modest amount of revenue, it becomes, a destructive enterprise. so, what i am proposing, is essentially, to strategies in pursuit of one goal. which is, revenue neutral law enforcement. and, it does that do two things, one, it is subtle, and that is the pooling, of criminal justice revenues across all muniz abilities within the state. and, remitting those back to the state, to then be distributed on a population base basis back, and i know it might seem kind of odd, to suggest having local agencies, give money to the state, only to have it spent right back, without any change in the quantity, but, that remittance, dilutes the incentive from any one arrest. so, when that moment of discretion that the officer has, that arrest is not going to actually put any more money in his or her budget, in his or her overtime allotment, in, it is not going to keep their boss any happier. it has been just deluded out, and then it will come back, but then, we also know there's a lot of political gain that can be played, politicians are very clever, in terms of moving money around, which is why my second proposal, is more ambitious. and, that is the establishment of a public safety rebate, with the direct revenues from arrests, so, was the property seized, would be pooled in the state, and then rebated back at the end of the fiscal year, to low income constituents, using the snap program rubric pixel, it would be minimal overhead, but, it is returning this money, that has already served a purpose. it has served its purpose as a deterrent, but now, it is never going to actually enter a budget. so, when members of the community received this rebate every year, it is informing them what law-enforcement is doing in their community, but it is also, it is establishing a commitment, and making a promise, that we are using these penalties, because we do not want to fall back on incarceration. we want them to be -- once they service purpose, we are getting this back to you. because, we are here to serve and protect you, we are not here to take from you. >> thank you, next, i would like to turn to you now, and ask you to kind of tell us a little bit more about the problems you are addressing in your proposal, you focus a little bit more on the individual side of monetary sanctions sanctions. >> sure, absolutely, but i get started, i want to talk a little about the scope and type of sections we are talking about, outside of the forfeiture context. so, there are roughly, speaking about four general categories of economic sanctions that are widely used in the united states, so statutory fine is only think of most often, there are also fees, administer the fees that are charged, for things like, if you have a jury trial, you could potentially have a fee. you might have to pay for the cost of your free trial, or postconviction incarceration, one that often surprises people, you might have to pay for the cost of the public defender, the only qualified for, because you are in -- so, these fees can stack up. we also, in many places have water, loosely called surcharges. so, these are additional items that, operate us are essentially, fines on top of it, they're often targeted for particular plots of money, so, you might have, a driving violation, that result in a ticket, and your surcharge might be used, in some states, to pay for the public parks fund, or, in arizona, there is the clean elections campaign fund, so it may have nothing at all to do with law enforcement, and so, as we were just hearing about this being used as an alternative tax mechanism, this is a particularly obvious moment, with that happens. , we also have this restitution, which at least in theory, is supposed to be paid to victims, although, we have not done a particularly good job of ensuring that actually happens. which i'm happy to talk about in q&a if people are interested. so, there all of these different kinds of sanctions in play, and in many cases, and this happens, from adult felony court, all the way down to traffic court, although restitution is left only in that context, and also, in juvenile court., one of the things that happens, is that if you do not have the ability to pay immediately, we keep tacking on more fees, more collection costs, interest, and the like, and so that that just continues to accrue. and, if you miss a payment, or fail to pay, then we have what are called poverty penalties, that can be tacked on top. so, this may be again, additional economic sanctions, but it also might be an extension of your term of probation or parole, it might include incarceration in some places, in many jurisdictions, it involves an extension of the loss of your right to vote, and, i should note that most of those things, are arguably unconstitutional, but they are widespread around the country. so, well, how many people are in this position of not being able to pay? well, justin lost evidence, we have about the economy, and of course, we have heard that a lot of this is targeted at low income minority communities, but just as a general matter, the 2017 supplement all poverty measure, found that almost 14% of americans are living in poverty. and, as a result, nearly, exit, a little bit more than a quarter of adults, are not able to make, meet their monthly means, so they are having to skip things, like rent, or food, basic necessities. if you look at, minimum wage, in most states, minimum wage, even if adjusted for the earned income tax credit, would leave a family of three below the federal poverty line, or just above the federal poverty line. so, as a result, there are a lot of people that just simply are not in a position to make a payment, if suddenly, they have these economic sanctions added to their monthly bills. and so, and, when you add onto that 9 million households in the united states are un- banked, meaning, they have no access to standard bank account, there are no savings to draw from, that means that if they have to make payments, they might be going to more expensive options like payday loans. so, this all has serious implications for people who are unable to pay, and what we know, is that people with criminal histories, people, especially who are coming out of that period of person eight incarceration, or entering the community, are likely to have very limited success finding employment. having a fennelly eviction on your record can hamper that, there may be actual -- restrictions on employment, and business licensing, that can attach to certain convictions, there also might be triggered by an inability to pay. and as a result, we have people, in particular people and communities, and communities of color, who are returning to spaces where there are fewer jobs available in the first instance, are already having difficulty making payments work. so, there are a number of things i'm happy to talk about, in q&a, around, you know, what, is this even meeting the goals of punishment, does this deter not -- there is evidence, that actually using unmanageable sanctions is criminal genic, and pushes people into crying. it has problems for system legitimacy, there are a variety of issues that are, that problems that this create. and so, my proposal, which i actually think, is, i should say, is not a panacea to the large-scale problems we're talking about, this does not fix the racial injustices in the criminal justice system, it makes a small contribution, hopefully, to improving fairness in terms of the use of economic sanctions, where we use them. and, that is to require an ability of pay calculation. and, i am happy to discuss later, you know, with the details of that might look like, but, as a rough overview, you really need to have the criteria be objective, both in terms of the person's income, and expenses, one of the things we see in places where there is not objectives, information used to determine the ability to pay, is that it can turn on things like what shoes you are to court. you know, so, it does not really give us an idea of what people are able to pay, i am happy to talk about the day finds model for this, this is the system used in europe and latin america, that is a particular form of means adjustment, where we -- the ability to pay, and defense, to, but the penalty imposed. , it is important to understand that there are going to be some people who cannot pay anything. and so, we have to be serious about talking about non- incarcerated, non-economic responses to what are currently handling justice problems. >> would like to turn to daniel no, and asked, monetary sanctions are not new in the u.s. criminal justice system, what have we learned from that history, and particularly, in terms of how sanctions matter for civil rights? >> thank you, that is, it is a pleasure to be the historian in the house today, and get a chance to think about past. and, i'm going to the policy reform idea on the table, from our own deep history, that probably does not occur to anybody, but the american revolution, was indeed, excuse me, a policy response to exactly this kind of problem. but we just walk into that history all of it, to remind you, because it connects to the issues of legitimacy, that both of the previous speakers raised. so, here is the text, of commission, for customs commissioner, type, appointed by the king, in 1754 by king george. i do hereby appoint you, this head of george stewart, my commissary, in the said province and territory during this is in maryland. thereby granting unto you, this had george stewart, all fees, process, and advantages to the said office, anyways belonging, and i do hereby command all justices of the peace, mayors, sheriff, keepers of jails and other offices, administered in this province, to aid and assist you, as they will enter the contract their apparel. this commission in other words, explicitly paid for the customs officer, and also, i definition, the folks assisting him, through the fines, fees, and asset seizures that he would be collecting as a part of his job. this, the american colonist, rejected, as you all know. and, basically what will happen, is that the standard way of funding, and set of offices, and then, after the french indian war, the british government was insignificant at, and saw the colonies as a source of revenue extraction, and so, they subconsciously, in these cases, converted the concept of the ministration of justice from one that was about justice, and legitimate, and securing the peace, to being a concept of revenue generation., the siri of navigation acts, sugar act,, specifically creating lots of goods but beyond specific designated areas, increase the number of customs officers, and the response to this again, their policy, reactions was, that the sons of liberty burned, and providence rhode island, in 1772, the gaspi was a customs officer ship that had interrupted an american ship that was transporting rum, the rum had been sent to boston for sale as a customs prize, so the sons of liberty burned the gaspi, -- number one. >> [ laughter ] >> and, in annapolis, another instance, a ship called the speedwell, it was secured by the customs officers, and all of its goods, and not just the olympic good, all that good, all the tackle, the agreement of the ships were put on auction at maryland coffee house, the proceeds be split between the court for its operations and the judge personally., that the response for the americans was to -- the customs officer. so, we have a deep history of thinking about this problem, and -- the equation of independence, the language of the declaration, that complains about the king sending a form of officers to -- substance, is a comment on exactly this treatment of the ministration of justice as a revenue generation source. the fourth amendment, of course, the protection against unreasonable searches and seizures, is also about exactly this issue, the seizures component about that, it was really focused on this revenue generation problem. so, the americans founders, recognize that the legitimacy of a system of justice depends on that, its purpose be justice, and securing the peace, and, though in various ways to try and establish that. over history, we have failed, and failed even in the 1780s and 1790s, her actions were failing again now. and i just want to conclude, by reading a poem, but the national poet laureate tracy smith. is called declaration, it is very short. and, i am reading it, mainly to indicate that, the issues of legitimacy, and the connection to the deep history of this country, and why we built a rights protecting system in the first place have not been lost on communities of color who were experiencing this treatment. so, tracy smith, who is herself african-american, the poem is basically a little excerpted it's of the declaration of independence. he has, swarms of officers, harassed our people, he has plundered our, ravaged ours, destroyed the lives of our, taken away our, abolishing our most vulnerable, and altering fundamentally the forms of our command every states of these oppression, the petition for redress in the most humble terms, repeated petition has been answered only by repeated injury. we have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here, taken captive, on the high seas, to bear. that is all from the declaration of independence. it all pertains to the issues we are talking about today. thank you. >> that will be a little difficult to follow. >> [ laughter ] >> but i would like to come to you now., i promise you -- right, so i did my lengthy >> yeah you did -- >> i was hoping you could tell us a little about the contemporary political context of monetary sanctions, particularly as they relate to punitive access, because i do think if all is nicely. >> so, first, thanks to the hamilton project for the invitation, i am honored to be on the panel, especially, to the secretary rubin who has been a voice for justice reform, and have just think of it, as secretary of our treasury, being a voice for justice reform, is powerful. so, i want to make three points, the first, just by way of introduction, is to think professor michalski, for signing the ferguson reports, and in many ways, we are here in memory of michael brown, and that report, occasioned by his death, i think really brought a national consciousness, the practice that we are talking about here, and it's extremely version, but not its uncommon version. the big point i want to make, is not the revolution, but, just remember where we are, in our country, in terms of the use of the criminal sanction that has, that has morphed over the last 50 years into an instrument of oppression. so, we have, as a secretary has mentioned, at the outset, quadruple the rate of incarcerations in the united states, and, the number of people, including my colleague, had written about this, national report, document how it happened. it was because, and excessive use of the sanctions that we call the criminal law, to accomplish, not -- because that is not what it was about, but, in essence two, reorder our society. incarceration rates increased supervision rate, increased of pretrial detention which we will talk about next, and here we are talking at another manifestation of the same political hero, of what, a number of us are calling the era of punitive expense, and that is the use of monetary sanctions, as part of this regime, extended use of state power. so, this is a moment where my inner libertarian comes out, surprised at some of my friends, but i say, what we have done, as we have weapon iced state power, through the use of the criminal sanction, in ways that are very destructive, particularly destructive of our aspirations for racial justice. so, that is the first point, you cannot talk about this topic, much less in the next panel, without recognizing that we are in a moment, a unique moment of american history, and it is time to reverse everything that we've built over the past 50 years, including this. the second point i want to make, is that the question of financial penalties, which can think there were four actually, that, there is bill, which of the next group will talk about, there is finds, there is fees, and there is forfeiture. that use of the state power, to extract money from people who are under state control, in some way, has to be seen also, you know, thanks to secretary rubin rubin, context, now, if you look at all these phenomenon, in the position of the family, that has to deal with financial realities that include not only these, but you know, but, read matt evans book, prediction,, there are other things going on, in the lives of poor families, where this is one more thing, on top of a strained financial reality. the economists that have looked at what i think is, in some ways, one of the most damaging, consequences of this era of punitive excess, which is the diminished ability, particularly of african american families to regulate and transfer wealth between generations. so, it is not just these that tend to depress that ability to cumulate wealth, but it is also, commissary, it is also the trips to the prisons, it is also to the collect calls, so, at some point, you say what have we done, in this country, to those who are struggling the most? final point: i find it interesting, and this is a real contribution of the papers, to look at what we are doing, here with forfeiture, and penalties and bill, in the context of, the reductions of tax revenue, to localities, and this notion, it sounds so benign, of user fees. so, we pay user fees also we pay a little extra to play in air paint to finances, so those boys can do the work we do, so that we are safe. fine with me. i will pay more to make sure that we are safe. user fees, as applied to those people who are understated state supervision, is i think, obscene. so, the question here, is not proposal, but it is first, principled, why would we ever charge somebody, for the privilege of being supervised? why would we ever charge people, that question, for the appointment, of counsel where you are -- so, the user fees notion, which comes from an interesting place, and maybe it is part of the reduction, in- state lefties in tax revenue, we charge people to do certain things, it just seems to me, in this context, to be obscene. so, we look at the criminal justice system is a public -- that you paid for the by the public, because, the adjudication of wrongdoing, the corporate response to that wrongdoing, is a public value, and it enhances the respect for the rule of law, because that is a public value. and then, he creates this machine, for which pushes people in and out of the system and charge them for that privilege, we have done something thing that needs to not only is unconstitutional, but is a matter of who we are as americans, inconsistent with core american values. thank you. >> so, i would like to turn out to kristin, and michael, are you the revenue motivated pleasing, is not just that the people who are the targets of, but also, can undermine public safety. do you think that is right, and have you seen this play out in your word? >> yes, so, first, i want to think the hamilton project for shining a spotlight on an issue that i think, and one of the greatest threats to our democracy today, fines and fees, and a resurgence of modern-day prison. and, frankly, we talked about it a lot, but there is not enough being done, to promote reform, and and this pernicious practice, but i think that, jeremy is exactly right, that it is in large part, to the legacy of michael brown, and what we have all learned about ferguson missouri, that is helped to promote great a public dialogue, around this crisis, in ferguson, missouri, this is a place where 20% of government revenue is generated off of fines and fees extracted off the backs of poor people. the majority of whom were black and brown, and simply lack the ability to pay. fees tied to a census, like walking, in the manner of walking in the roadway, failure to comply citations, these are citations that raise you to about 95 percent, of african- americans in ferguson, the visible violation for having an unloaded lawn, putting out trash in the wrong place at the wrong time, were also issued overwhelmingly, to black residents, and sadly, we know that these practices are widespread and pervasive across the country. what is remarkable, is that, it is actually eight clear supreme court precedent that makes clear that this is unconstitutional. a case called bearden versus georgia, which says that you cannot lock somebody up, merely because of their inability to pay. but, the problem is, that we do not have an enforcement mechanism to help breathe life into that supreme court ruling, and so, one of the things that we do, at the warriors committee for civil rights under laws, we try to hold some of the bad actors campbell. we have been doing a fair amount of this work in places in the deep south, like arkansas, oklahoma, and louisiana. where these practices are particularly deep seated. and, just to kind of help put certain camino, bring these issues to light, let me share, just a word, about a case that we brought in sherwood arkansas. there fines and fees on poor people, is just, a fact of life. this is a town, that has set up a check for it, and made big business out of prosecuting people for writing small checks to local merchants. the court advertised their service on their website, and, one of our clients kind of really, speaks to how, problematic the practice is of this court work. one of our clients, nikki petrie, was a woman, who five years prior to our final filing of this, wrote a small check for about $29, and over the next five years of her life, she paid more than $600 in fines and fees to this court, and when we filed, she remains indebted by about 2600 dollars. she had no job, she had no source of income, she stayed at home to take care of her bedridden mother, there was no way she would ever climb out of that hole. and, on top of all that, she had spent about 25 days in jail, because of her inability to pay those fines and fees. wide county arkansas, -- here as well, one of our clients is a woman named nikita. both she and her husband, were entangled in the court, because of their inability to pay fines and fees tied to nonviolent low- level offenses. they lost their children. because, they were in jail, and are still struggling to get access to their kids back. so, these are practices that destroy lives, and tear communities apart. we believe, at the lawyers committee, that ligation is a powerful tool for promoting reform, it helps to lay the groundwork that might help create the political will, necessary to embrace some of these bold and ambitious reforms, that we have been hearing about this morning. so, we continue to look to the power of the courts, to help to hold some of the bad actors accountable, to send this strong message to other judges and courts out there, that their practices are violating the constitution, and hopefully, hopefully, if we send a strong message to enough courts and judges, we can help to institute some of these reforms that might bring about the systemic change that we ultimately need. thank you. >> back to the proposals and, i would like to come back to michael, and ask, you know, if you want to say a few more words about the details, about what you're proposing, and some of the advantages that it would have?>> i think, the principal advantage, to the first strategy, the first proposal, which is the remittance, of direct revenues from -- back to the state, and then being distributed per capita, is the simplicity of it. that, there is not a lot of machinery, and there is no explicit cutting of the revenues in a given fiscal year, but so, if we seem to affect for that, if we have seen a decline in interest, and decline of citations, a decline in the revenues, from that, it is strictly going to be driven by that five 10, 15% municipalities, that are egregiously pursuing this as a fiscal strategy, so, for the median local government, this will have actually no effect. and that is what we want. we want a policy that is simple to intimate, that is going to, any outcome effects, will be driven by, the most aggressive municipalities, and the ones that have really adopted this strategy. as for the more ambitious, the proposal, to establish this public safety rebate, i think -- i want to take a step back, and just note, that i do not think that this is what most officers signed up for when they went to the academy. they did not perceive themselves becoming an agent of a tax system, they did not see themselves, as tools to expropriate wealth from a community. and furthermore, most of these officers, they do not work there beat with a partner, if anyone is going to have her back, it is going to be the community they serve. but, there is no way they're going to get that community support, and partnership, if they are a walking financial catastrophe. if they are a threat, in just so many dimensions. so, at the margin, i think this is not just harming families, and harming households, it is, actually putting the officers themselves in greater danger, and at the very least, impairing their ability to execute their duty. now, if you want to get into the real nitty-gritty, there are subcomponents, there is additional small policies, ending federal global programs, to remove the incentive for seizures, and participating in drug arrests, that can lead to greater seize property revenues, but, i think the most important thing to establish, in this conversation, is the goal, to delight dilute this incentive, and to reestablish trust between officers in the community of the public safety, is in fact the principal goal.>> thank you. >> so, but i would like to ask you kind of think often, if you could just a little bit more, about what exactly you are proposing, and how you see it working could >> sure, absolutely. so, as i mentioned in my initial remarks, it is very important that objective information be used, in the ability to pay calculation. and so, one of the things that you want to think about, is, engaging in institutional design defendant, is what constitutes income, and, how broad is that? because, of the issues that is really important to understand in this context, is that -- their pain, and it is particularly true, that recent study in alabama, that showed that was particularly true for middle-aged african-american women. so, people who are not themselves, debtors, but are paying the debt for someone else. and so, one of the things that you would do in this type of calculation, is determine what income is, if a person has a job, then, you assess what the actual, take-home pay is, if they are on public benefits, that could be used as a source of income, if you are applying this to wealthier individuals, you might think of other things, like real estate income, and the like. but, focusing on folks who are unlikely to have that, you then have to think about what are the parameters, of whose income we are going to include, and the pressure, with respect to family income, is that on the one hand, if the person actually has access to that money, it seems illegitimate not to include it, within what they are paying on the other hand, we have a real and serious concern, that people who did not engage in in a sense, are being effectively punished for it. and so, we can look at models, there were a series of day fines, experienced in the united states in the late 80s, and early 90s, that -- included some aspects of family income, consumer bankruptcy, federal student financial aid, there were a number of models we might look at, to try to establish very clear parameters of what does and does not count. that i recommend in the paper, is that that family income be limited to income to which a person has a legal or equitable right, and not beyond that. now, we also have to match that on the deductions i. so, anyone whose income is included, should be included on the cost of living deduction, as well as, anyone who is dependent on those people. but, not go any further than that, on either side, to ensure that we have a clear determination of what income includes. under deduction side, it is important to think about things like daily cost of living, that may be different in different jurisdictions, or even different cities within the same same jurisdiction. but, there are -- again, looking at these day fines models, from the late 80s, there are ways that you can set very standardized amounts, so that, the actual application of this system, is not labor intensive administratively. and then, you need to make sure there is some wiggle room there, -- very serious medical knee. if not, below a certain threshold, knock off 80%. sharp line below you get the relief. if you are slightly above that line you don't get the relief and there are some that are slightly below that line who might need less relief. another approach is to use a sliding scale, which gives you more granularity. finally the approach i talk about in the paper is a day finds model. you would take the adjusted daily income of the person and multiply it by a penalty unit, the results of which would be the fine imposed. the penalty unit is by the seriousness of the offense. jaywalking might be half a penalty unit, burglary might be 100 penalty units. the units are without considering ability to pay, so they are entirely by the severity of the offense and that multiplication then results in the amount. so the 1 penalty unit in my daily income is $10 a day, my fine would be $10. if it was 100, my fine would be $100. we had some experimentation within the united states used in as i mentioned earlier several european and latin american countries, so we do have some data about what that looks like. >> let's step back and ask a core question here. we teach undergraduates in the economics of crime. but incarceration involves a whole host of costs and fines can actually be alternative to those that are preferable. you can deter crime and punish it and in principal allowing them to work and not paying the cost of incarcerating them. so i'm wondering where that goes wrong. econ 101 goes off the rails. this is a question for anyone. >> something professor colgan touched on, if the fine and the time for which you have to remit payment is such that your standard occupation is just not going to cover it, you have a lot of people in a situation where property crime, where -- i mean, just boosting becomes your best option or the riggy option of low probability of gettingon caught. it's a probability in a terrible situation. >> we need to make distinctions here. set aside forfeiture. we haven't referenced the supreme court decision, forfeiture is ill gotten gains, different rationale. our next panel,s let's be clear about the distinction of fines and fees and purposes. fines are intended in our jurisprudence to have a sanction purpose. they are intended to be a type of punishment. they should be, as that's aptly said and constitution required that they be affordable, some ability to pay. even within that there are alternatives to that mechanism of sanction and day fines is one. and disclosure, funding a lot of this. very exciting time, been at it for 5 years, 30 million worth of projects underway. so experimentation is one of the things we should be doing now. day fines is one. i hold out little hope, to answer your question, that we should think of fines realistically to the incarceration realities. beyond doing that, if fines is a way of undoing incarceration, it will be a long way before we get there. i would say in some cases say judges would weigh this way. but an entire different beast, this user fee idea, they are not intended to be -- have a criminal justice purpose. they are revenue generating. with all of the conflicts built into it, it is not just police, it's also judges and sheriffs, probation officers, private probation companies. so that economic incentive is built into the fee structure is where the revenue goes to the same government, but public purposes as being different between those two, our view is public good, the criminal jus [beep] shouldn't be on the bam of those taxpayers. >> some say it's an extension of what jerami said, exactly that. the criminal justice system is a public good, so needs to be funded through reasonable taxes and the other question is for the sanctions of pot implied what should guide with that. we have a slightly different take on how you deal with mass incarceration. you have to rebuild a capacity for the country to see that the purpose of sanctions should be to make everybody whole, victims whole, wrong doers whole. achieve health and well-being of the set, in the peace and security context. i think with that, the day fines issue is a really important adjustment. we do need to bring down the frequency in which we use incarceration as a sanction. it's not the only alternative. mass is entire point. day fines plus diversion that take people out of the criminal system, those are all important parts of reorienting the system to general peace, security and well-being for all concept. >> and i can jump in as well. ill agree with that. and also important to know when we are talking about deterrence, the idea of deterrence is a person can make a meaningful choice about whether or not to operate within the confines of the law. but there are a number of things we charge economic sanctions for where there is no such meaningful choice. so when we charge a person who is unsheltered for trespass, for sleeping in a public space, they don't have a meaningful choice to operate within the confines of law and we are still adding to their burden, fines and fees that will never be paid. and so part of this conversation, too, and we are talking about incarceration because that person will end up in jailed a some point because we put them in the system is we have to talk about why is that a crime. all right. why is it that has been criminalized. that is a key part of this conversation we have to have. >> let me just to, again, lift up the power of litigation. we actually sued 13 judges in the city of orioles, a case called cane versus the city of new orleans, a class action brought on behalf of poor people, overwhelmingly african american who were incarcerated. judges failed to consider their ability to pay and one of the powerful things in the decision that we got from the court last year was the recognition of then constitutional conflict of interest where you have judges imposing these fines and fees and it really underscores how we can't look to courts and judges to self-police here and reforms that are ultimately going to be necessary to turn this system on its head and bring it back into conformance with the constitution. >> and i want to tack on one thing. i see so much in the fee structure of the criminal justice system right now. is this sort of fool's gold ambition of a free lunch that we can have a criminal justice for free because the criminals will pay for it, is the implied message and one thing we know in economics is it just can't be had. if you want a true public good provided, you have to pay for it. >> that makes sense. we are getting a lot of great audience questions, so i want to turn to those. the one that's come up the most, to ask you to think about how this is all interacting with the ways in which we privatized the criminal justice system in various aspects. there is a number of different angles, but i wanted to toss that out generally. >> so craig, just to come back to arkansas, craig had county ar arkansas, two judges ran for election on a platform of reform. their end goal was to improve some of what was broken with the criminal justice system in this community. they won and one of the first things they did was terminate a contract with a private probation company called justice network that had profited and extracted hundreds of thousands of dollars off the backs of poor people in this community for years. and decided that they would put in place a better system, one where they would think carefully about people's ability to pay. people had been locked up in this community because of their inability to pay this private probation company that would knock on people's door. they cooperated with police and, you know, threatened arrest at every turn. remarkably, that private company sued the judges and it came moving forward now we have weighed in and offered up an amicas briefing and it undersores the dangers of privatizing the criminal justice system and the sense of entitlement some of these predatory companies have. i think it's important for the public to be vigilant when we hear discussions about cities, counties, government in general entering into contracts with private companies. the situation i think in craighead county is so problematic. the problems that riddle communities across the country that privatize. >> just a little bit, we often look at private -- as devil incarnate and sometimes do terrible things, but shouldn't let that question, legitimate question, distract from the fact we have elected people throughout democracy who do what we are talking about. judges, certainly financial offices. i just want to keep the focus on this is us. we have created this system and can undo it. what i find is in addition to the litigation victories, which are spectacular, counties, boards of supervisors, san francisco, they created a financial task force, financial something -- financial justice task force and decided to stop doing it. same with california, stop imposing fees on juveniles. so what happened in the justice reform movement, which is grassroots up, should grab onto this issue and just like there is progressive prosecutors being elected and mayors and others, say we are going to stop doing it. that's a different proposal from the ones we are hearing from our economic colleagues, but i think that has to be the way to think about it and stop feeding the private beast. >> i think these two things as two sides of the exact same coin and what it comes down to is power and discretion being traded and in one case it's being put in the private marketplace and being exchanged and turned into profit. and another place in the political marketplace, power and discretion is being trade for revenue and votes and political support. and both are terrible outcomes. the seed underneath both of them are that power and discretion can be exchanged. and so much of what we have an obligation to do is to try to mitigate that discretion and how it can be employed. >> unfortunately we don't have much time left. we have lots to talk about and great questions that i wish we had time to ask. but what i would like to conclude is to everyone but the authors. tell me sort of briefly, what are you either most optimistic about being able to fix fairly soon or a different take, what should we be pushing on? what is the thing we haven't discussed until now that should be getting more emphasis? whoever wants to start. >> i would repeat as before, the day fines models is a really important one to move forward and it has been used extensively in europe, generally the two i held up, the use of incarceration, so in the u.s. incarceration makes up 80% of our sanctions. and in the netherlands it's 70%. a lot has to be criminalized to get there. that's a part of it. but you also have to have a much broader set of alternatives to incarceration and day fines is with that. and i would echo jeremy saying put an end to the fee part of that, the way you fund the system rebuilding -- the administration of justice as a public good. >> i will say briefly i think attention be paid to this is overdue, electrifying. i think this issue has not gotten sufficient attention. i also hope it's immobilizing to a point of focus for those who are doing the hard work at sort of ground level. but it's also up to the journalists. follow the money. so important conceptually rose and conflict in paying for the operation out of the fees -- talking fees, not fines, of people who are under supervision. that's egregious in the private case. so there is an exposure opportunity here and i think we are just starting to see it emerge and what i reference is localities, whether cook county or new orleans is one, it's in our name and we can stop it. >> the bipartisan support we are seeing with criminal justice reform is indeed hopeful. resurgence of modern day prisons, jerami is why it's not getting the attention it should. it is impacting overwhelpingly african american, latino communities, pulling families apart, entangling people unnecessarily in our criminal justice system who pose no threat to safety. in many areas don't rise to the level of crime and raise taxpayer dollars and ultimately endangers communities because we are not focusing on the real threats and real issues that are in the communities. we issue a report today that looks at these problems in a real systematic way and it speaks to a problem that is pervasive across the country and i'm hopeful we can find the bipartisan coalition necessary to achieve reform across our country. >> thanks so much to all of our panelists. we are going to have a brief break and be here for the second panel. . >> and we continue with continued ways to the criminal justice system in the ways of fees, fines and bails. focusing on how the system with negatively impact the poor and minorities. this is 50 minutes. >> the first panel, set up this conversation well to continue esnt

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