Riverside Superior Court changed its civil assessments policy Oct. 5, after a joint letter from the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California and the Western Center on Law & Poverty claimed the policy violated the state and federal constitutions.
The court imposes civil assessments, a form of fees, on people charged with traffic, misdemeanor or felony offenses who don’t pay court ordered fines by due dates or who fail to appear.
Policy changes
The changed policy sets $300 as the upper limit of civil assessments, not the default amount of the assessment as before. It also gives respondents 20 days to show good cause for not appearing or not paying, instead of the 10 days previously allowed. It also provides an “other” option in the good cause statement, where respondents can state their reason for not paying or appearing. Previously, respondents could only state hospitalization, incarceration or military orders as good cause.
The changes were instigated by an ACLU and WCLP letter, confirmed Marita Ford, Riverside Superior Court chief deputy – finance and human resources and public information officer. The court made changes where it felt the law dictated such, Ford wrote.
Riverside’s civil assessments brought the court $9.4 million in the fiscal year that ended June 30, according to the court’s financial reporting documents. After the cost of collecting, the court had net collections of $7 million.
Ford did not know how much the changes in civil collections policy would affect revenue, she wrote.
Letter to the judge
The June 22 letter authors claimed the court’s prior policy of imposing $300 civil assessments without individualized evaluation violated California law, state and federal constitutions, and exacerbated poverty and racial inequality.
Rebecca Carr Miller and Richard Rothschild of the Western Center on Law & Poverty, and Adrienna Wong and Michael Kaufman of the ACLU of Southern California, wrote the letter.
While individuals are fined $50 or $100 for most traffic offenses, a flat $300 fine for missing that payment is exponentially more than the punishment for the underlying offense, the letter authors wrote.
The $300 flat fine conflicted with the discretion required under Penal Code Section 1214.1, which states that courts “may impose a civil assessment of up to three hundred dollars,” the letter authors wrote.
Response to changes
The seven-page letter called for the court to reconsider using civil assessments altogether, a request Miller repeated when asked for comment.
“Even individualized review of cases cannot solve the core problem with civil assessments, that they exist to raise revenue by imposing enormous fees primarily on low-income people and people of color who, because of factors outside of their control, face added barriers to making timely payments or appearing in court,” Miller wrote.
While the changes to court policy are important, the court’s actions to implement the changes behind the scenes will be of higher consequence, Miller wrote in an email. There are not enough details yet to know whether the court’s changes will sufficiently address the author’s concerns, she wrote, but the court is providing the letter authors with periodic updates.
