Pay the fine, or do time

With budget shortfalls leaving Florida's judicial system cash strapped, some county courts are intensifying the pressure on people to pay fines and fees by using Draconian methods like putting debtors in jail.

Lee and Collier county officials say they're not going that far..

Lee County collects about 60 percent of all fees related to misdemeanors, said Linda Doggett, Lee County courts department director, speaking for Clerk of Court Charlie Green, who was on vacation last week. That exceeds the statewide average by 20 percent. In traffic fine collections, Lee falls about 5 points short of the 90 percent average in Florida.

Collier County has had an even higher success rate with its collections. There, people who don't pay must appear before a judge or face a bench warrant. But judges won't jail people as long as they show up to court, said J. Walter Cross, executive assistant to Collier Clerk of Court Dwight Brock and head of the collections program there for 15 years.

"We have no interest in you going to jail — in making your life impossible," he said. "No one in our program has ever been arrested for failure to pay."

Ms. Doggett said a similar system is out of the question in Lee County. Instead, it's the threat of a revoked driver's license which motivates payment after 30 days. After 90 days, your bill goes to a third-party collection agency, which tacks 25 percent on to the total cost.

"We just don't have the money or personnel to pay for (collections court)," Ms. Doggett said.

In places like Leon County, home of Tallahassee, the Clerk of Court has responded to the pressure to increase revenue by jailing more people who can't pay, according to a report by the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law. It showed that Leon County's collections court put 839 people in jail for failing to pay fines, during a year-long review ending last September.

Still, officials and judges there insist that debtor's prison — illegal based on the U.S. Constitution — is a thing of the past. They argued that, technically, people are jailed for violating court orders and not for being unable to pay.

In Lee and Collier counties, it hasn't come to that, even though funds are scarce. Kathleen Smith, the public defender for the 20th Judicial Circuit, said if the state Legislature cut her budget any further, she would consider turning away clients instead of providing them with insufficient representation. Meanwhile, the Legislature has considered giving the court system another round of budget cuts.

Some lawmakers say the answer to finding more funds may be tougher regulation on how County Clerk's offices spend money, instead of harsher collection methods.

"We definitely don't want to bring back debtor's prison," State Sen. Dave Aronberg said. "Putting someone in jail should only be used as a last resort in the most egregious cases.

"I think the Legislature is probably going to require oversight of the clerks' budgets to make sure the money is spent wisely," said Sen. Aronberg, "but I think the clerks do a good job of (collecting the money) already."

He added that fines and fees that go uncollected, "pose a larger tax burden on the rest of us."

In the past, Lee County judges have issued arrest warrants for unpaid fees of more than $200, Ms. Doggett said, but that tougher measures are rarely used now. "We're pretty much doing things as we always have," she said. "We did increase the frequency of referrals to our collection agency."

Ms. Doggett says her office has also tried to collect more fees by asking judges to send defendants to the Clerk's office to set up a payment plan as soon as they're finished in court, but with little success. As a result, many defendants leave and forget about the fee until later.

"I know (the state Legislature) is trying to get more revenue," Ms. Doggett said. "There's a variety of bills floating around now — bills to increase the filing fees," which would mean higher fines for court goers. "Every time they have a legislative session they increase the size of the fees."

For some court goers in Lee County, that may mean they'll have to go without a driver's license longer and endure more of those bothersome phone calls from a debt collector. But at least they won't have to worry about jail time or even getting reported to a credit agency.

"They're not going to ruin their credit, just continue to bother them (until they pay)," Ms. Doggett said.