Signed Electronically Leader Training Application Template for Summer Camp Made Easy

Signed electronically leader training application template for summer camp

Ok Hi Everyone. Welcome to the Journal of Law Reform's annual Symposium. My name is Amy Ciardiello I am the managing Symposium Editor and we're just really excited to have you all join us for our first panel. This panel will be moderated by Professor Primus and I'll kick it off to her. All right. It is a pleasure for me to be here to kick off the Michigan Journal of Law Reform Symposium on the poverty penalty and America is over use of fines and fees. Over the course of this week I know they have an amazing array of panelists coming, and today is no exception. I'm very excited to welcome these people virtually into your home's to talk about their expertise on fines and fees. So what I'm going to do is have each one of them start in the beginning by just talking to you for a few minutes about what fines and fees are right how their use has changed or evolved over time based on what they've studied or been working on. So to start us off first, I'm going to introduce Professor Jeremy Levine, Professor Levine is an assistant professor of organizational studies and sociology at the University of Michigan. His work analyzes the politics of inequality, particularly in US cities. So please join me in welcoming Professor Levine. Good afternoon everyone. At least those that are coming in from that on Eastern Standard Time. I'm going to talk about the development of Victim Compensation Law in the United States, a public benefit largely paid for using fines and fees. In a scholarly paper, we use the case of Victim Compensation Law to advance theories of the state, essentially we argued that the discovery of fines and fees as a financing tool allowed the state to expand into a new area of social provision. But for our purposes here, the history of Victim Compensation Law, gives us a window into how lawmakers in the 70s and 80s came to see and justify fines and fees, not as a tool for punishment, at least not primarily, but as a solution to the problem of new public program financing. In the mid 1960s as crime rates rose and the United States debated new rights for criminal defendants liberal politicians proposed a new benefit for innocent Crime Victims compensation for any medical bills or lost wages associated with bodily injury. The idea of sparked and national conversation as this article from the Boston Globe shows. And while the idea was hard to disagree with. There were However, some lingering questions. Namely, who was going to pay for it. The first federal Victim Compensation bill followed mid 1960s Great Society logic crime is a failure of society to prevent crime. And so society, meaning government has an obligation to reimburse crime victims, for their medical bills, Rob, the 1960s and 70s. The idea faced stiff resistance from conservatives and Congress Strom Thurmond called it dangerous grounds outside the bounds of governmental responsibility Dixiecrat Sam Irvin reminded his colleagues that taxpayers are innocent too. And they shouldn't be burdened with paying for a new social program, no matter how politically appealing it sounded as these debates unfolded state governments proved far more effective at passing compensation laws. Money was still an issue. And so states experimented with a novel program funding mechanism, new criminal fines. In 1965, California, the first state to pass a Victim Compensation Law, as judges to at their discretion, increase whatever fines they were already going to impose and take that extra money and put it into a fund to help pay for the new compensation program. Maryland in 1968 was the first day to include a mandatory add on fine added to every offense outside of traffic violations. So from the state's perspective, this was a creative and innovative way to raise money for a new program. But as this chart from Maryland shows, it turned out to be wholly inadequate. at least initially. So states increase their fines Maryland double the $5 to $10. But even that wasn't enough, they needed a federal law to subsidize cost. Congress learned about states novel financing schemes during congressional testimony in the 70s and quickly latched on to the idea. Representative Wiggins for instance, like the idea of actually abandoning the principle of restitution altogether, and instead think of fines as a user's tax on crime. In fact, he liked the idea of fines that actually had no relation to offenses whatsoever. No matter what an offender was convicted of or how much they were already paying in restitution to their own victims or if they had victims at all. Everyone should be forced to pay the same additional fine into a fund to compensate victims who had suffered bodily injury. Now discovering this fine mechanism was a start this tool. But to get a federal law passed the Reagan administration in 1982, added a political and moral valance what Brian was presented in zero sum terms, yet criminals and yeah taxpaying victims, any law to help victims in their framing required punishing criminals. And so as one advocate put it. The laws new fines for federal misdemeanors and felonies was quote unquote, a justifiable tax on crime lowest hate Harrington and help promote a catchy slogan that I think really captured the politics at hand and implicitly the racial politics at hand. The criminal and not the innocent taxpayer will pay for this program. The new financing tool, and it's more meaning was so appealing that opponents reverse their positions Strom Thurmond, who had pledged to never vote in favor of a victim compensation bill in the 1970s actually introduced the victims of crime act or VOCA in 1984. The only difference between the bills, was that vocal was funded entirely by new criminal fines, low capacity easily in 1984 with bipartisan support, thanks in part to a certain senator on the Democratic side from Delaware. And I'll just conclude here by noting that Victim Compensation Law paid for largely using fines and fees has expanded greatly and withstood numerous state constitutional challenges. While it is hardly the main action in terms of fines and fees, particularly in the US, a Victim Compensation Law nevertheless helps us see how fines and fees became taken for granted, as a fundraising tool for public programs. Okay. All right. Thank you so much, Professor Libyan for that sort of historical context as to how at least some of these public policy programs came into being judged foster Are you on the voice. I am wonderful welcome, it's my pleasure to introduce Lisa Foster. She is the CO director of the fines and fees Justice Center, a national nonprofit that is dedicated to ending the unjust and harmful imposition of fines and fees and the criminal legal system. She is also a retired California superior court judge and the former director of the Office for access to justice at the United States Department of Justice and she has had a little bit of technical issues so she's going to be joining us by voice rather than by picture, but we're very excited to have her here, and I'm going to turn the microphone over to her to talk a little bit about the ubiquity of fines and fees and the highly local nature of this problem and just how much fines and fees are net widening in our society after a professor Libyans historical introduction. So judge foster without further ado I turn it over to you. Thank you, Professor 5% Good day everyone I apologize for the technical problems but at least I can be here at the disembodied voice, and I'm going to try today to give a bit of an introduction to the issue of fines and fees, and I'm going to start with a little vocabulary. So, fines, as I'm sure you all know, are a monetary sanction for the violation of law, they date back to before Magna Carta, and they were originally an alternative to incarceration finds were for offensive to minor to want to study outside. Today, find serve that thing purpose traffic signs are an example that many of us are familiar with. But fine today are also often imposed. in addition to a term of custody or supervision. Indeed, many states have mandatory minimum sign, particularly for drug offenses that must be imposed, regardless of the length of a prison term in Florida, for example, mandates mandatory drug fines range from $60,000 to $750,000. And they're imposed regardless of the length of a prison term. Among the collateral consequences of that fine in Florida. If you can't pay it. You will never get your voting rights restored teams as contrasted with lions are an additional monetary sanction that are imposed on people in the legal system to pay for the cost of the system or to pay for other government services, depending on the jurisdiction. These are sometimes called costs chart, surcharges assessments. They are as Professor prime is indicated ubiquitous. Depending on the jurisdiction, they can be imposed pre trial. think warranties electronic monitoring fees or bond fees. These are also almost always imposed a conviction. Like the victim fee that Professor liberty and was just talking about, but there can also be many other fees prosecution fees public defender fees DNA fees and in many jurisdictions, a so called assessment or surcharge is imposed that conviction that fund services wholly unrelated to the legal system, or they fund the general fund of the jurisdiction. Finally fees can be imposed post conviction probation or supervision fees, room and board feces for phone calls and email there are agencies to pay your fines and fees finances are different in every state, and they often differ by local jurisdiction, within a state, but fines everywhere share common characteristics. They are punishing, and they are net whining, and that is they enlarge the criminal legal system and it's harmful impacts on people's lives, particularly in communities of color. Let me give you just two examples in many states, if you get a ticket for rolling through a stop sign and cannot afford to immediately pay it. You have to go to court. If you don't go to court, because for example, you know you can't afford the fines and fees, a warrant will be issued for your failure to appear, and you can be arrested. Or if you go to court and explain to the judge that you can't afford to pay the full amount, the judge may say okay come back in a month, and bring me $100, and you will be ordered to keep coming back to court, every month until you pay the amount in full. But if you miss the hearing, because I couldn't get off work, or you couldn't find childcare or transportation or you didn't have $100 that month. Again, a warrant will issue for your failure to appear, and for whatever reason if that weren't issues, you can be arrested and taken to jail. And that's all because a police officer said you all to a stop sign in Clark County Nevada, Las Vegas. In March of 2020 there were 270,000 outstanding traffic wardens. Those are warrants issued for either failure to appear or failure to pay. And the average length of stay in the Clark County Detention Center on those words, was 60 hours, that's two and a half days. And here's the second example in 38 states. If you do not immediately pay the fines and fees assess that conviction, your driver's license will be suspended. If you drive any way, which most people do out of necessity, and you get stopped you likely will be arrested and charged with a misdemeanor, in many jurisdictions in the United States driving on a suspended license is among the top five criminal charges. The system gets bigger, and it gets better, because of fines and fees. Let me end however with a word of hope, and there is some over the course of the next few days and during the symposium you're going to hear about the fact that low income communities and again particularly communities of color have been organizing and there have been many significant reforms over the last five years indeed in December the Michigan legislature cat and the governor signed to build it and driver's license suspensions in Michigan for both both failure to pay and failure to appear. And the bill reinstates the licenses of hundreds of thousands of Michiganders who's licenses were previously suspended. Michigan is not alone in the past two and a half years, 13 states have an active reforms to curb debt based license suspension. And as I said you will hear today about many more reforms. So I'm going to hop on that note of optimism and turn it back over to you, Professor right. Great, thank you so much as Josh foster mentioned, there's a lot of reform currently going on here in Michigan and that is a perfect segue to our next speaker, Chief Justice Bridget McCormick is here with us today she is not only the Chief Justice of the Michigan supreme court but also a professor and former dean here at Michigan law school where I had the pleasure of working with her and knowing her as a colleague, as the chief justice, she has promoted statewide initiatives devoted to improving the courts service to the public and in particular, delivering on a promise that courts are independent accessible, engage with their communities and efficient, and a lot of that has revolved around fines and fees, so I'm going to turn it over to Chief Justice McCormick to tell you a little bit about what's been going on here in Michigan. Thank you very much thank you all for having me. And thank you to the journal for putting on this really important and timely conference. I'll say upfront that I expect to learn a lot more than I. Then I will have to offer. And I think, Professor premise was being kind in noting, our time as colleagues, which was lucky for me to be her colleague She was also my student though to age me a little bit so I'll just get that out, up front as well. I'm gonna. I hope to contribute today by giving you a little more information about Michigan as a laboratory for a lot of the issues that the experts on the panel are here to discuss. I turned out to be very much a generalist as as a justice, and as the Chief Justice I have my hands in 25,000 pots, but this is one of the most important and it intersects with lots of the other parts that my hand is in but let me, let me sort of give you a more specific sense of what we mean here in Michigan by fines and fees and costs. I have to say I look forward to my co panelists teaching me if there is a difference between fees and costs because I don't see it they just seem to be the same thing by two different names but but I'm ready to be educated a fine of course is supposed to be punitive it's it's supposed to serve the punishment goal of deterrence Michigan's founders knew that financial penalties and criminal cases could become a problem. As they had been in England and so the Constitution of 1835 includes this language the clear proceeds of all fines assessed in the several counties for any breach of the penal laws shall be exclusively applied for the support of said library so they specifically determined that fees, would not be used to fund courts they would be diverted to fund libraries and that was a way to to steer away from the problems they, they, they worried about. And today, there are find success for all kinds of penal ordinances and state ordinances, and we can we can talk more about those those specifics fees of course are supposed to be, what covers the cost of handling particular item of business for a court so it's easy to understand in the context of a civil case because a filing fee is supposed to defray at least in part, the cost to the government of assisting in the resolution of a particular civil dispute. It looks different in criminal cases because, as you heard fees are assessed at sentencing, and in Michigan at least there is a what's called a state minimum fee which is required in every single criminal case. And no matter, you know, what it what it costs to adjudicate the case. And then it's distributed through a complicated formula that's almost impossible for a lay person to understand but it is spelled out in the trial court funding commission's report in lots of detail if anyone gets super interested in it and it can be waived by a trial court judge if the defendant isn't detect that fee is $68 a defendant is convicted of a felony and $50, if the defendant is convicted of a misdemeanor or an ordinance violation civil infractions also have minimum state fees. In addition to that state fee, there is a crime victim assessment fee which is also mandatory in every single criminal case, it's, it must be ordered without any regard to agency or MIT or ability to pay according to the state statute, and that's $130 and a felony case and $75 in a misdemeanor case. And that's charged, whether or not there is a victim listed by the prosecution, in the case, or not 10% of that stays with local government the rest goes to a state fund which compensates victims in cases where restitution isn't adequate. And, and here's where the real work of fees in my view gets done in Michigan, it's, it's in what we refer to as court costs. And this is where the vast majority of financial obligations are levied in Michigan criminal cases there is a state statute that allows a sentencing judge to include any cost reasonably related to the actual costs incurred by the trial court without separately calculating those costs involved in the particular case. This is a recent addition to the state statute that governs costs, and it was a response to a Michigan Supreme Court case that addressed this practice before the law specifically allowed for it. And it is currently being litigated so I will be careful about what I say and don't say about it throughout the course of our discussion. But as you might imagine, there are complicated constitutional questions that arise in this in this system and I'm on record with respect to some of them because there was one challenge that was specific to that brought specific constitutional challenges that the supreme court denied leave in and I am on record in a current statement that there were additional challenges that were not squarely presented in that case but are, but are barreling down at us, that raise the sort of most obvious question, which is, to the extent local courts are using this. This system to be able to fund their own salaries, their staff salaries, keep the lights on. It raises a fundamental due process problem that those challenges as I say are kind of heading our way so I'll be I'll be thoughtful and careful as I as I talked about it throughout the hour. I want to fly to a couple of couple of other additional things, just for returning to that the system I've just described is what what happens for adult criminal defendants there is an analogous set of fines fees and costs for juvenile cases, which raise many of the same issues and are often under litigated, and in my view under theorized, and to tie it together with some of the real world consequences, which led to significant reform just recently here in Michigan, the jail and pre trial task force the governor's jail in pre trial task force which I have co chaired with the lieutenant governor for the past two years. For the very first time collected statewide data about our jail populations. Criminal Justice data is notoriously terrible we don't have much of it, including here in Michigan, with the help the poor Charitable Trust we now do have good data on who is in our jails and why or jail populations in Michigan, like many other states over the last 30 years even though crime is at a 50 year low and not surprisingly, one of the things we learned was how many people were in jail because of a failure to pay fines and fees and i mean by that. Exactly what you just heard a lot of people who have been who have been unable to pay fines and fees have their drivers license or used to have their drivers license suspended in Michigan. Then the next time they're driving to work which is required in Michigan because we don't do public transportation here. They're pulled over, and they now are charged with a misdemeanor for which an officer had no choice but to bring them to jail, we learned that in Wayne County the single highest reason people were launched into that county jail was for driving with a suspended license. And those licenses were overwhelmingly suspended for failure to pay fines fees and costs. So lots of unintended consequences are, I think unintended, but lead to significant before we Michigan I think I can stop there because there'll be lots more to continue to talk about as we go along. Alright, great, thank you so much and I want to introduce also our last but certainly not least panelist, Professor Jeffrey Sylvan is a clinical professor of law at the University of California Berkeley, where he directs the policy advocacy clinic, the clinic represents impacted groups in California and nationally on campaigns to abolish racialized wealth extraction and the criminal and juvenile legal systems. And so he's going to talk to us a little bit about the racialized dimensions and nature of this problem welcome Professor Seldon. Thank you, Professor Primus and hi everybody out in, zoom land Yeah, I'm grateful to the organizers and very honored to be included on this panel with such amazing people whose work, I admire so much and over so many years as Professor Primus shared I direct a clinic that we launched in 2012 to address this Nemec racial and economic injustice, especially where legal representation for individuals and even impact litigation can't effectively solve problems, I'm happy to say more about the clinic and our work but I thought I'd tell you a little bit about how I came to the work and why I believe it's so important to contest shrink and abolish fines and fees. So I've spent most of the last 35 years actually in civil legal aid providing assistance to people in need of income housing, healthcare, and other you know civil legal needs about 15 years ago lawyers and law students in our clinic sounded the alarm about mass criminalization which blanketed entire black and brown neighborhoods with The Scarlet Letter of a criminal record. As an obstacle to jobs, housing and education, criminal records actually made it impossible for us to help people feed their families keep a roof over their heads, access to medical care, etc. In response to this widespread disaster we started a clean slate clinic to help people clear their records and overcome this. What's been termed civil death. The inability to participate in, and civic life. I'm happy to note, by the way, Michigan has been a leader in automating record clearing criminal record clearing which is wonderful about eight years ago some of the same lawyers and law students identified a related and growing problem which was the explosion of criminal fines and fees, especially in the wake of the Great Recession. Our clients were returning to their communities with thousands of dollars in bills for virtually every aspect of their involvement in the criminal system they were charged for the investigation of their case for their public defender their detention probation electronic monitoring and on and on. As you've heard from the other panelists. and as Judge pastor said a lot of this is very state and local. If criminal records were a scarlet letter that made it impossible for people to get back on their feet fines and fees were a ball and chain that just drag them down even further counties like mine and Alameda County California in one of the bluest regions of the blue states, increased fees tenfold in 2009 to try to make up for budget shortfalls as Professor Primus said in the years that we've been working on this issue I've come to understand fines and fees as state sanctioned racialized wealth extraction. I know that's a mouthful, but by state sanctioned I simply mean that fines and fees are authorized by state law. Yes, there are rogue police officers bad prosecutors awful judges current company excluded, and probation officials who engage in lawless behaviors, but the vast majority of fines and fees charged in this country are completely lawful state legislators create them and local officials charge and collect them. I'm having to say more about this. I think Professor Levine touched on a little bit it's also my view that on the best days courts will only constrain the worst abuses, so I don't think litigation is going to lie is likely to save us from the problem of fines and fees. By racialized I mean that people of color, generally, and black, brown and indigenous people in particular are disproportionately targeted and harmed by fines and fees. In many places people of color are charged monetary sanctions at 510, or even greater times the rate of white people. That doesn't mean that low income white people are also victimized by fines and fees, but it's critical in my view to understand exactly who was over policed over prosecutor don't over punished in the system that kind of net widening that judge foster talked about, because of the myriad consequences for failing to pay fines and fees and again you've heard many of them already today. People of Color also push deeper into the criminal system. Again, I think, Justice McCormick just explain what some of that looks like in Michigan. Finally by wealth extraction I mean the literal stripping of capital from subordinated groups but also the attendant social control fines and fees are part of a horrific continuity that begins with chattel slavery and runs through the black codes convict leasing and mass incarceration, both as a form of extractive capitalism and to maintain and enforce racial hierarchy fines and fees are not particularly remunerative for government. Most people in the criminal system can't afford to pay them. That's why we have fees for not paying fines and fees. But they impose massive debt and civil consequences on vulnerable people and communities, to give you just two quick examples from California about the scope of money we're talking about. In 2017 the state legislature abolished all juvenile fees and by January 1 this year counties have discharged more than 350 million dollars in outstanding fees owed by youth and families in the state. Again disproportionately black and brown families almost all vulnerable youth and families in 2020 the legislature repealed almost two dozen fees and the adults system. And this is the first time To my knowledge, this has happened. And by July 1 of this year counties will be required to discharge almost $16 billion and outstanding debt that's billion with a be an outstanding debt owed by people in California. Most of this debt is held in the form of civil judgments, it's regularly enforced through wage garnishments bank levies tax intercepts property liens and all the other mechanisms of the state to get money from people are conclude but just by saying that understanding fines and fees a state sanctioned racialized wealth extraction in my view is critical to crafting meaningful reform efforts. I don't think we should tinker with such an unjust regime I think we need to abolish it route and stem. Thanks. I look forward to the discussion. Okay, so thank you to all of our panelists for those very informative and provocative initial statements about both what the system is and how we got here, I want to push a little bit on a couple of different questions and I may direct a question towards someone based on their background and expertise but any of our panelists should feel free to jump in if you have something to add with respect to these questions, I guess, a professor living I'm going to start with you because something, Professor self and said, You know, when you had started talking about the historical evolution of the victim compensation funds in your study of fines and fees. It seems like it was a revenue generating system. But as Professor solvent has explained it sounds like because But as Professor Silva has explained it sounds like because so much of the system is focused on poor people that it isn't very effective at generating revenue, and he pauses there's obviously a racialized component to this, I guess I would be interested in hearing you talk a little bit about the political and social forces that brought us to where we are today I know you mentioned that there was a lot of even bipartisan support for the implementation of some of these fantasies that like slight nod to then Senator now President Biden right in your conversation. And so, what is it that you think actually is going on here that gave us this system. Yeah. So right set of questions and I'll do my best to sort of just knock them off a little bit, because I could spend all afternoon probably thinking about this together. But let me give you a couple quick reactions. So, first on this point about them not being wholly adequate revenue generating, given that they're targeting people that are by definition, less able to be paying into the system. I think that's really important in 1977, Tennessee was the first state to pass its Victim Compensation Law wholly funded by fines and fees so they actually made it in the law that you could not have any general appropriations other states have subsequently done that, but they were the first day to wholly do only fines and fees. What happened was is that they couldn't get the money. So they had a $21 mandatory for everyone $5 or so that was added to everyone who was on probation and parole on a monthly fee on top of that, and the AP runs this article that shows how at the beginning of 1978, they were at a 200 or $300,000 budget shortfall couldn't pay for it. And so, a state senator on Cobb County a democrat said, you know, honestly, I don't think the problem is the fine, it's a novel it's new I get that, but I think we just have to have more punitive on ways of extracting that money so it's everyone's comments that came after me. They added on penalties for not paying to try to incentivize more people to pay. So add it and add and grow it and grow it and hope you can get the most out of it. So the response from state and federal level was instead of saying well this is kind of not really working was just to add more and thinking that will just sort of try to trim as much as we can and it'll eventually work itself out on the racialized point I think one thing I want to highlight is that for sociologists as a sociologist, we often think of public benefits and the racial ization of public benefits has to do with program beneficiaries. So we think about the racial ization of welfare is about the welfare queen. These are sort of the racialized idealized beneficiaries of of this particular benefit with Victim Compensation over the entirety of the lead up to vote for the 20 years of lead up to VOCA. Interestingly enough, there was a concerted effort to de racialized or to at least make it seem as if it is something for everyone. So wasn't actually seen as something that was primarily the Kitty Genovese of the world the white women being targeted by black men. It also wasn't necessary seen as something that is for, you know, poor neighborhoods inner city neighborhoods where I sort of people of color will be victimized. All of them were linked together. What was implicitly racialized however was the criminal. So, in the 80s and the lead up to VOCA. There was a research fellow at the law school that, quote, and a news article where he basically said no one cares were criminals pay. Now of course everyone on this panel panel plus that is login I think really cares what criminals pay, but the logic is that these are others, they are people of color primarily that's the image that you get about violent criminals, they're black or Latino and so on, And so without even having to say they're black without even having to say they're black or Latino and so on. By trafficking this idea of the criminals are paying the criminals are paying advocate the victim compensation on particular, are able to create these new fines and fees. By trafficking in those races stereotypes of who commits crimes. The last thing I'll say in this bipartisan point is that I would just give a point of plug to Elizabeth Hinton a brilliant historian who is now moving over to law school, wrote an incredible book about. It's called from the war on poverty to the war on crime, the essential argument being that when we think about the war on crime, often historians too often we're thinking about Nixon into Reagan, the reality is work happening under democrats Johnson in the Great Society, where the precursors and Victim Compensation Law is no different. This was something that was originally intended to be a public benefit. But it's something that conservatives latch onto and transformed it into a much wider tool for punishment. And once we get to the 1980s, there was large bipartisan support the punitive edge that came up in the Democratic primaries with relation to President Biden and vice president Harris was alive and well in the 80s, and they were a big proponents of this because as this fellow from the law school had said, No one, no one cares what criminals pay, in part because of rationalization of crime. Okay, thank you so much, I guess, I want to pivot a little to the idea of like whether things are the same now, as they were then as many people who are on this call know we've seen a surge in the development of progressive prosecutors, a move against incarceration a less punitive turn and a lot of areas of society and criminal justice becoming part of something that both parties want to work toward. Do you think that's limited to the incarceration setting or do you see room for reform on the fines and fees side of it as well. Maybe I'll start with judge foster right like. Has there been successful reform can there be successful reform. Thanks. So, the answer is yes, we are making progress in. In many fronts and it is bipartisan I mean we have a fair amount of support from many of our friends on the right, particularly folks who subscribe to libertarian principles. So, we work frequently with the Institute for Justice which is a libertarian public interest law and policy shop. We work in many places with Americans for Prosperity which is a conservative organization, even grover norquist and taxpayers for reform support strongly support the end to debt based driver's license suspensions at so we we do have support across the aisle. I'm not sure what happens when we start turning into the question of where the money is going to come from if not from fines and fees, but we'll cross that bridge when we come to it, in terms of reform, itself, we have made good progress. We just said a couple of things and first is that this issue is really quite new, in the sense that have the kids were not terribly focused on fines and fees, until really 2015, there were a couple of early alarms that were run the ACLU and the Brennan Center for Justice back in 2010 wrote reports about the problem of fines and fees. But they basically set on shelves and people just didn't pay a whole lot of attention to them and it was Ferguson, and the murder of Michael Brown and the Justice Department's civil rights investigation that really woke the country, up to the problem of fines and fees and sparked a lot of reform work around the country. And the reforms coming in to really forms one is litigation. There has been a fair amount of litigation on this issue, particularly on the issue of debtors prisons, many jurisdictions and particularly in states that have municipal courts, local courts were like Ferguson was just throwing people in jail if they couldn't pay their fines and fees. It turns out that practice is unconstitutional. You can not incarcerate someone for failure to pay a fine or fees, unless you just the judge determines that that failure was willful that means the person has the actual ability to pay their fines and Z. But that seemed not to penetrate. So many members of the judiciary and they were doing it anyway. litigator stopped, a lot of those practices around the country it was a game of whack a mole for a number of years, and it still is there still places where it pops up, but that that practice directly that is a judge says to someone, you can't afford to pay, therefore I'm going to put you in jail has stopped and the reason it's unconstitutional is a Supreme Court decision from 1983 called Bearden vs Georgia, that the other, and there's been other litigation, there was a litigation and then there is still pending against driver's license suspension there's been litigation against private probation companies something we haven't talked about yet but in many places around the country if you can't pay your fines and fees, they put you on probation. And that typically is probation run by a private company that charges you for the privilege of being supervised in order solely to pay off your fines and fees. And some of that litigation has been successful as drugs, Justice McCormick mentioned, there was a litigation in Michigan challenging, a number of costs that were being imposed by trial courts. And the on the grounds that they were not authorized by the legislature and the Michigan Supreme Court agreed. There have been, there's been successful litigation and unsuccessful litigation. But a lot of work been done in the policy arena, that is changing laws. So, in addition to Michigan in the last two years 13 states have an active bills to curb their debt based suspension practices, and they're not the states that one usually talks about in the same sentence with respect to the same policy reforms. So, California and Mississippi. Maryland and New York and Idaho and Montana so red states blue state purple states, 13 of them. If that's been very successful. And there's been a terrific reform Jeff is responsible for a lot of it in California, the legislature took away the authority of counties to impose fees and in juvenile cases that's been true also in Nevada, and in Maryland. There is going to be litigation pending all over the country to end juvenile fines and fees. As he mentioned. unbelievable with legislation in California, taking away the authority of counties to impose 23 different fees, including probation fees and public defender fees. And there's been some similar work at the local level Ramsey County, which is Minneapolis abolished. About six different sees that the county has the authority to impose in his criminal legal system. Chicago has revamped a lot of its practices. So there, there's, there has been reformed, it's hard. I don't want to underestimate how difficult it is. And it's because it's about money. And also the ideology of punishment that people. What has taken hold is this notion that people in the system should pay for the system. And that is, it's relatively new, but it's it persuades a lot of legislators. Okay, great, actually a professor self and can I invite you to join this conversation because you said something very interesting in your remarks that litigation is not going to save us and judge foster says look you've been so successful with litigation in California and the juvenile system so I'd be interested in hearing your perspective on, right, what will save us if not litigation. And how can we get there. Sure, yeah just, I guess, a couple of quick things one is that beard and as Judge foster says prohibits the state from incarcerating people because they're unable to pay the fact that that was, that was a widespread practice that's now, much less frequent is is critically important. no question about it that's the, you know, curving the worst abuses. On the best days, the excessive fines clause has been given a little bit of wind. As a result of a case decided in 2019 I think it was I see bill Maher's on the call. Judge foster mentioned Institute for Justice, the libertarian group that's done great work in this area, brought that case so excessive fines clause again make her, the worst abuses. The, the standard is very difficult to meet to actually find a constitutional violation. The reform. So, that's my. That's what I mean by. I don't think litigation is going to get rid of the daily harm, that's created by by fines and fees in courts and probation departments and, you know, private contractors. But in California the reforms are in the legislature, it's important to know not through litigation, so the state legislature was persuade was persuaded to repeal all fees in the juvenile system, and then a couple years later went back and made it retroactive so counties have to discharge the debt, the legislature was persuaded to eliminate authority for 23 of the most common and problematic fees on the adult side and included a provision for retroactivity that requires discharge. So, Nevada, the other states that judge foster mentioned, Nevada, Maryland. Actually, New Jersey, and they'll be they'll be about a dozen juvenile feed bills this. This spring including maybe in Michigan, I think, one's close to being introduced We'll see. So, so getting rid of fees in particular and finds actually New Jersey interestingly eliminated all fines and the juvenile system. I put them together in part because the of the title of the symposium but judge Foster was right to distinguish them. On the other hand, but there are we do have proof of concept that you can get rid of fines and that doesn't necessarily mean that the alternative is incarceration, because of the net widening that judge foster described. We don't know what the right size is of the criminal justice system it's been used for so many different things including revenue generation, or perceived revenue generation that yeah we you know that's part of why I pushed the abolition language even the fines, because it's like let's figure out what what we really want to punish, and how we don't know that because it's just become such a vast system. And I will say this just getting back to Professor veins point in the counties where we've gotten data and data are hard to come by as other folks of reference I think justice McCormick mentioned it with respect to Michigan. We've seen counties that spend more money, collecting fees than the revenue they get is Santa Clara County south of us spent $450,000 to collect $400,000 a year. The Oregon youth authority, which is the who incarcerates kids at the state level last year spent $866,000 to generate $864,000. We are extracting money from poor mostly black and brown people for the purpose of chasing other for people. That's what the system is doing it's not actually in many cases providing any revenue for anybody it's a self perpetuating system that's just creating a ton of harm. So, I have no idea if I answered your question, Professor privates. Now you did, you did. I guess I want to bring up Chief Justice McCormick into this conversation because something that press herself and I think judge foster also mentioned is look like a lot of this it doesn't make any sense when you actually look at the numbers. And so, What are the obstacles to fix it like why is it greater than 13 states right i mean you're involved both as the head of the judicial branch in Michigan and also working on a task force with the executive branch and also I assume and, you know, legislation and that has come out of that so where's the right place for reform and why don't we see more of it. I think the, the, the, sort of top level answer your question is, as you well know, change in complex systems is just hard to come by right I mean, it requires multiple stakeholders who all contribute to the problem to be sort of moving in the same direction to fix the problem. I mean, so, you know, when you when you, when you think about the, the jail populations. You know grown so tremendously without any increase in public safety. In fact, probably a decrease in public safety, you think of all the different actors in the criminal justice system who have contributed to that problem. Each acting in good faith in their own you know sort of piece of the problem so legislature legislators, acting in good faith create statutes that penalize more and more things. But you know they they're they're doing what they believe is in the interest of public safety and then police and prosecutors I mean police and sheriff's acting in good faith, make arrests based on those statutes prosecutors acting in good faith charge based on those statutes judges acting in good faith, set a bail or bond, you know, based on those based on those charges, and all of a sudden you have this, you know, really dysfunctional system that's not producing results that any individual in the system probably would agree are the results at wants public safety right, it's not producing that. And yet to unwind it, you know, like any other complex problem you need all of these different actors like moving in the same direction. That's hard. And I think that's part of why sometimes litigation can like, you know, just cut to the chase and like it's a, it's a, sometimes litigation is like the quickest answer because it forces the attention of all of the different actors around a complex problem and I think that's true around the problems here. Let me just just again to put it like to put meat on the bones and in Michigan example Michigan is a non unified court system that means we don't have, you know, the Supreme Court. Through our administrative oversight constitutional oversight, really have to use carrots and sticks to get courts around the state to to do different things and the carrots are those little mini carrots and sticks are kind of twigs. We don't have any big sticks and we don't have to be the carrots. We have 242 trial courts over 500 judges, another 500 magistrates and referees and 165 different trial court funding units, many of which require the courts to pay their own way and the way they pay their own way is by collecting fines and fees. Just that administrative nightmare makes it complicated. But, you know, back to where I started, I think, I think complex problems are really really interesting really really difficult and require everybody rowing in the same direction and every stakeholder around the table which is why the, the jail Task Force was ultimately successful it was bipartisan and had every branch of government represented, and every other stakeholder in the system. And frankly, we were able to be staffed by the Pew Charitable Trust so we didn't, you know, didn't cost the state any money and we were able to, you know, have the best support the best data the best national research. Available it that's a, you know, that doesn't come along every, every I went back to me recently and said can you do the same for juvenile justice because we need it. And they're kind of busy it turns out, so it's hard to complex problems our heart. Okay. We only have a couple minutes left but judge foster I'm wondering if we can turn the attention of this conversation to two big movements that have come up in the past year right obviously there's the pandemic. That I guess not a movement but an occurrence right that we have all been dealing with, and that has probably had drastically affected the way both our civil and criminal legal systems work, and there's been a movement toward defunding, the police that has gotten a lot of traction right around the country in various locations and I'm wondering if you could spend just a couple of minutes talking about how if at all you think those movements have affected the fines and fees debate. So let me start with the defund movement, and let me just say very simply that there there are really two sides to the defund movement. One is to reduce the amount of money that government or spends on law enforcement and the other side is to reinvest that money in community. One of the easiest way to invest money in low income communities of color, is to simply stop taking their money. And if we ended the practice of taxing people because it. That is what fees are, they are taxes. They're funding government services, essential government services, like the justice system. They are taxing people to pay for government services they're just selectively taxing up small segments of the population rather than the population as a whole. And so, we think that the fight that fines and fees are intimately connected to the defund movement. It's also the case that we have to think a little bit about simply cutting some of law enforcement budgets and then what what do we do with that money and. And I think it would be wrong to simply reinvest that for example in the justice system it needs to be reinvested in community with respect to coven. Very briefly, I think. First there's, there's no question but that both the health and the economic impacts of coven have fallen on precisely the same population that suffers under our current fines and fees regime is low income people and people of color. And so, COVID has been particularly difficult in for folks to try to pay their fines and fees. Fortunately, through a lot of advocacy, as the state and local and national level. a lot of jurisdictions at least initially suspended. Many of their collection practices and and basically built suspend a collection all together. Now, some of them have bought so for. In some places, it is still the case that they are not suspending driver's licenses they're not enforcing warrants, they're not making people pay their fines and fees. A lot of that has expired, the avenues they were in place for the first maybe 369 months of the pandemic but as we're approaching year one, some of those measures have gone away. And what worries us most, is, is that legislators will again turn to fines and fees as a way of selling their budget caps. What happened, and Professor Silva mentioned this what happened in the Great Recession. So 2008, and really from 2008 to 2010 of the recession rolled through the public sector is that government dramatically increase their fines and fees both number of fees that were imposed and the amount of those fees. And they did it quite explicitly to close their budget shortfalls and we are concerned that that not happen again. I will say that I think the good news is that there has been enough advocacy on this issue and enough attention paid to the issue fines and fees in the media, but we're not seeing anywhere near the number of jurisdictions that we saw in the Great Recession try to do those terrible things. There are some. And if you go to our website this is a shameless plug for finesandfeesjusticecenter.org. We actually have a microsite on the websites devoted to COVID it and you can see both our Hall of shame and Hall of Fame where we can we show you which jurisdictions are doing good things and which are doing bad things and the response to kind of it. And also, tracking legislation and we have policy recommendations for jurisdictions as well, but covered is complicating things and it remains to be seen exactly how this all plays out. Okay, great. Well, we could spend all day I'm sure talking about any one of these issues but I do want to take a moment to thank our four panelists, Judge foster Professor Levine, Chief Justice McCormick and Professor Serbian and for taking their time to share their expertise with expertise with us. And I want to thank you for coming and encourage you to attend some of the other panels over the course of this week as you learn to deep dive deeper into some of these issues and learn more about how fines operate in our country and some of the ways that you as future lawyers many of you right might be able to work to eradicate this problem so many thanks to the panelists and to the Journal for sponsoring this and I hope to see many of you at future panels this week.