Criminal Justice Advisory Committee Co-Chair Appointed to the Illinois Supreme Court’s Statutory Court Fees Task Force by the Governor
Chicago Appleseed Center for Fair Courts congratulates Jonathan Pilsner, a co-chair of the Collaboration for Justice’s Criminal Justice Advisory Committee and attorney with the Office of the Appellate Defender, on his appointment to the Illinois Supreme Court’s Statutory Court Fees Task Force (“Task Force”).
The Illinois Supreme Court Statutory Court Fees Task Force (“Task Force”) will consist of seven people appointed by the Supreme Court, four members of the Illinois General Assembly, two members of the Illinois Association of Circuit Court Clerks, and two people appointed by the Governor. The Supreme Court’s goal for this Task Force is to “conduct a thorough review of the various statutory fees imposed or assessed on criminal defendants and civil litigants,” including the impact of the Criminal and Traffic Assessment Act (CTAA). Chicago Appleseed, the Chicago Council of Lawyers, and our coalition partners — including Lindsay Hagy from the Exoneration Project, Angela Inzano from the Chicago Bar Foundation, Professor Mary Pattillo from Northwestern University, Cabrini Green Legal Aid, and others — helped pass the CTAA in 2019 and have continued to advocate for its efficacy.
The Criminal and Traffic Assessment Act created full and partial criminal court fee waivers for people experiencing economic hardship. Illinois’ fines and fees system is complex, and there is no limit to the amount of money one person can be expected to pay in one case. These charges can include “reimbursement” fees to police, prosecutors, and public defenders, costs for electronic monitoring bracelets, and more. Legal financial obligations (LFOs) create cycles of court debt that make it extremely difficult for people to move on from system involvement. In Chicago and many other cities, these money sanctions disproportionately affect Black and Brown individuals and communities, due to the history of racially-targeted policing and overly-punitive prosecution, making incarceration and poverty nearly impossible for many to escape.
Before the CTAA was passed, the first Illinois Statutory Court Fee Task Force convened in 2016 and found that Illinois has a “byzantine” system of court-related monetary sanctions that vary from county to county and that are filed at a rate outpacing inflation. Chicago Appleseed and the Chicago Council of Lawyers have long advocated for the reconvening of the Task Force to review the impact of CTAA and for the Illinois legislature to extend the Act’s sunset date past 2023. If the waiver pilot program of the CTAA legislation sunsets, it will remove even the barest protections for non-wealthy convicted persons.
We are excited that the Governor has appointed Jonathan Pilsner on this Task Force, along with a range of other expert representatives. Our hope is that the Task Force focuses on the impact of the enforcement of LFOs today; examines their legality to ensure that the CTAA is a fair, reasonable, and anti-racist policy; and figures out new ways to limit, and eventually end, the harms caused by economically regressive policies like court costs and fees.
As the evidence continues to indicate, reforms must be made to the LFO policy in the state of Illinois in the interest of justice for all. Fines and fees are not a productive rehabilitative method; they place an unjust burden on low-income people of color, are very unlikely to financially benefit courts, and may even be unconstitutional. The Eighth Amendment prohibits excessive punishment – including excessive fines – and the Fourteenth Amendment states, as a universal principle, that discrimination on the basis of wealth is a violation of one’s due process rights. As Chicago Appleseed Research Associate, Gabriella Kirk, and Michele Cadigan explain in their Journal of the Social Sciences article, “On Thin Ice: Bureaucratic Processes of Monetary Sanctions and Job Insecurity,” collection processes for “justice-related debt strain individuals’ ability to access and maintain stable employment,” which undermines the courts’ goals of “recouping costs” by trapping people “in a cycle of court surveillance.” There is no doubt that the imposition of thousands of dollars in fines or fees can be considered an excessive punishment for almost anyone.
There is a common misconception that court costs and fees are a key revenue source for counties that administer the Illinois legal system, but jurisdictions are actually very likely to be spending dollars to collect pennies. It is our hope that the Task Force will implement oversight of statewide and county-specific data relating to the collection of court costs and fees; analyze these data and research to document both the revenue from and the costs of collecting these debts; and conduct community-led impact research to understand how imposition of court debts affects individuals, families, and the public at large.
Contributor: Allison Wiederin is Chicago Appleseed’s Communications Assistant and a rising senior at Loyola University Chicago studying Criminal Justice and English Literature.