ALEC on Fines & Fees, Mississippi’s Public Defense Problem & Mor

"Too often there is an expectation that crime is something that can be cured with a light switch, and we just know that is not the case."

This week, the Louisiana legislature is meeting for a special session on crime, and is on the verge of rolling back significant reforms to its criminal justice system that first passed in 2017. Lawmakers and Governor Landry have blamed them on a rise in crime despite data to the contrary. The results of this session could have a drastic impact on both the state budget and prison population in a state that already has the second highest incarceration rate in the country. Further lost in the narrative about crime, safety and fiscal costs is the impact on victims, who potentially stand to lose funding for victim services they currently receive as a result of the savings from the 2017 reforms. 

"Reliance on fines and fees is a lose-lose for everyone involved."

The conservative American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) published an article that focuses on how fines and fees are an unreliable source of revenue flow for states and local jurisdictions. They write, “While a seemingly harmless and even appealing policy at first glance, it does not take much digging to realize the two main flaws this mechanism holds: they don’t yield the desired revenue, and they create perverse incentives at the expense of individuals.” Read more here. 

"We don’t hear from many places other than Mississippi of judges simply ignoring or deferring the question of whether the right to counsel applies."

Mississippi is known as one of the worst states when it comes to public defense for defendants. The Marshall Project this week highlights the issue in one lower court in the state where most defendants went without any lawyer for indictment. Beyond Mississippi, the public defender crisis continues to worsen nationally, and defendants who cannot afford to hire their own representation continue to be caught in the crosshairs of the legal system without adequate defense.

"The use of unnecessary detention has negative impacts, even if you’re just looking at it through a public safety or crime prevention lens."

Politicians on both sides of public safety debate often connect bail policy to crime rates. So much of the crime data that states and cities use is unreliable, and experts say connecting the policies to crime is problematic as a result. The reality, as Stateline highlights this week, is that most crime data is too unreliable to pinpoint specific policies as the sole cause of increasing or decreasing crime rates. The bail system also is oftentimes misunderstood as a form of punishment rather than the process for releasing individuals before trial under certain conditions.

“The irony of this already, of the school-to-prison pipeline that we’re that everybody always identifies, is now we’re using education money to help build a prison. I don’t think anything captures our problem more than that.”

Dollars meant for public education in Alabama could instead be used to build a new prison. Part of Governor Kay Ivey’s budget proposal allocates at least $100 million from the education trust fund to complete the now billion-dollar prison in Elmore County, Alabama. Lawmakers will need to approve this budget during legislative session.