Credit: Illustration by Etta O'Donnell-King/Street Roots
If a defendant financially qualifies for a court-appointed attorney to represent them in court because they are unemployed or homeless, they may still have to pay for it.
The judge can still order them to pay, say, $103,827.26 in attorney fees. To make matters worse, the defendant may only become aware of these fees after their prison release, leaving them with few options to advocate for themselves.
This is one of many real-life cases explored in the Oregon Justice Resource Center, or OJRC, guide on court-ordered financial obligations, or COFOs, released Aug. 5. Those interested can find the guide — designed to help people who may find themselves burdened by financial penalties— on OJRC’s website resource tab under reports.
Beyond helping people understand COFOs, the guide also includes tips and case studies to show how a person can lower the amount they owe during different parts of their case and lower, waive or avoid COFOs before they are ordered.
Alex Coven, the guide’s author and an OJRC Women’s Justice Project staff attorney, said real-life stories of clients seeking assistance from OJRC, many of whom faced significant stress and other difficulties managing COFOs, inspired the guide’s creation.
“Over time (we) just became so familiar with it,” Coven said. “We were hearing stories of people who were struggling to navigate court fines and fees or just overwhelmed with them that we thought putting a guide together, something that could help people and alleviate some of the stresses of the financial obligations, was an important thing to do.”
How COFOs work in the Oregon legal system
There are four main categories COFOs fall under: fines, fees, compensatory fines and restitution. In Oregon, when someone is charged with a crime, they are subject to a financial penalty, both a fine and court fees. The court considers their ability to pay the penalty, and depending on the crime, they may have the opportunity to waive, suspend or delay the fine or fee.
If they fail to pay, the court assesses an additional fee between $50 and $200. Although some states don’t use private debt collection agencies to collect fines and fees, Oregon still allows it. This practice can add a 28% collection fee to a person’s balance, according to the National Center for Access Justice, a nonprofit that analyzes and recommends policies to make the criminal justice system more equitable.
The state charges an additional interest fee of 9% each year when a person’s balance goes unpaid.
‘Debt Sentence’
Sonja Good Stefani, director of Metropolitan Public Defender’s community law division, said court-imposed debt can have collateral consequences on an individual’s livelihood. For many who can’t afford to pay fines and fees immediately, court-imposed debt can start of a series of effects severely limiting a person’s reentry into society, Good Stefani said.
“By far, court debt is still largely overwhelming, especially for people who are living in poverty, and it prevents them from doing all sorts of things right,” Good Stefani said.
According to the Wilson Center for Science and Justice and the Fines and Fees Justice Center, 98% of people ordered to pay fines and fees reported court debt affected at least one aspect of their daily life, including housing, food, employment, childcare, education, health, transportation, bills or other expenses.
Of the people who reported a housing hardship, about 67% fell behind on rent or mortgage payments, about 37% had their utilities shut off and about 34% needed to move to a different living situation.
Good Stefani likens court-imposed debt to a trickle-down effect. In one instance with a prior client who got a speeding ticket and couldn’t afford it, the client continued to drive despite a license suspension sustained by the infraction, causing them to rack up more tickets.
Eventually, the city immobilized the client’s car, which caused them to lose their job, housing and family — all because of a speeding ticket.
“Losing his housing then put him into this crazy cycle with (Oregon Department of Human Services) because he was homeless withkids,” Good Stefani said. “Think about that, speeding ticket equals ‘I lose my children.’
“It’s punishment enough to be poor, quite frankly. You have to deal with so much stuff when you like are low-income and you’re struggling to survive. Why are we trying to punish those people further by not allowing them to get jobs, get housing or take their kids to school?”
Attorneys often overlook fines and fees, as they often focus on reducing sentencing time or keeping their clients out of jail, Coven said. In some cases, judges don’t even consider whether a defendant has the ability to pay unless someone reminds them.
“I think there needs to be far better rules about whether or not judges can impose debt in the first place,” Good Stefani said. “They should have to do an analysis at the time of sentencing or at the time of conviction. They’re supposed to do this legally. It’s just not happening, and debts are getting imposed all over the place for poor people all over the state.”
Coven believes there is a common misconception that people don’t want to pay their financial penalties or want to skirt responsibility, therefore incurring a debt. In his experience, that’s simply not true. Most are just unable to pay.
“All of the folks that we’ve helped in my experience, not a single person has said to me ‘I don’t want to pay these’ or ‘These are unfair,’” Coven said.
Good Stefani believes the same rhetoric prevents legislative progress to keep people from accruing large amounts of court-imposed debt. Once a debt goes unpaid for a certain amount of time, it should be waived, she said.
“I think what people, especially conservative people, are afraid of is that people will take advantage of this,” Good Stefani said. “They’ll just go out, and they’ll rack up all sorts of driving tickets, and they’ll never pay their debt.
“But the truth is, there are huge collateral consequences to owing money, and you can’t get out from under it, you just can’t. People don’t want those collateral consequences.”
A symptom of the system
Oregon is just outside the top-10 states meeting policy benchmarks to create a fairer legal system, according to the National Center for Access Justice. Despite this, significant gaps remain.
Fines and fees disproportionately impact low-income people and Black, Indigenous and Latinx people, according to a report by the Wilson Center for Science and Justice and the Fines and Fees Justice Center. For homeless Portlanders, the problem is further exacerbated by the criminalization of their housing status.
Portland Police Bureau, or PPB, made its first arrest under the city’s latest public sleeping ban in late July, quickly followed by Sheriff Nicole Morrisey O’Donnell announcing Multnomah County deputies wouldn’t jail individuals for city ordinance violations. Mayor Ted Wheeler’s directive to PPB Chief Bob Day, which determines how the city will enforce the ban for the time being, illustrates how fines and fees add to the challenges of being homeless.
“In light of the Sheriff’s decision not to book and process arrests for violations of the City’s public camping ordinance, I am directing the Portland Police Bureau to continue to cite those who repeatedly violate this law and refer these cases for prosecution,” Wheeler said.
Good Stefani said policies like this keep homeless Portlanders in constant contact with the criminal justice system, making it harder to overcome their circumstances.
“Nobody is homeless by choice,” Good Stefani said. “A camping ban that basically imposes more fines on somebody is just going to do nothing. That debt is just going to accrue, and then it’s just going to be a bigger burden on that person.
“I don’t think a camping ban with sanctions that are impossible for people to pay is any solution, and that’s what I testified to in front of the city of Portland.”
Portland police disproportionately arrest homeless Portlanders compared to housed Portlanders, mostly for minor, non-violent legal violations. Homeless Portlanders comprised 50% of all arrests made between 2017 to 2020, according to a Reveal report.
Ultimately, Coven hopes the guide can provide hope for those navigating the system and spark a conversation about removing the barriers that keep people in it.
“Hopefully, stakeholders reading this will come to understand that this is a serious burden and to give people the consideration that they’re due for their financial circumstances,” Coven said. “The takeaway that I hope for folks reading this guide is that while this can seem very complex, it can be navigated. For individuals who have a lengthy history of getting COFOs and are just looking at them and feeling overwhelmed … there is a way to do this and to do it on your own if you can’t get connected to an attorney. Something as simple as just writing a letter to a judge, we try and provide that for folks. This is doable for folks.”
Street Roots is an award-winning weekly investigative publication covering economic, environmental and social inequity. The newspaper is sold in Portland, Oregon, by people experiencing homelessness and/or extreme poverty as means of earning an income with dignity. Street Roots newspaper operates independently of Street Roots advocacy and is a part of the Street Roots organization. Learn more about Street Roots. Support your community newspaper by making a one-time or recurring gift today.
