Economic Injustice
Fines and fees hurt people, undermine public safety, and drive Alabama’s racial wealth divide
In Alabama, illegal acts from traffic tickets and fishing violations to misdemeanors and felonies carry financial penalties such as fines, fees, and court costs. Because they are over-policed, over-charged, and over-incarcerated, Black Alabamians are more likely to owe fines and fees than their white peers. At the same time, historical factors such as slavery, convict labor, sharecropping, Jim Crow, lending discrimination, redlining, and schools that were segregated and underfunded by law before the late 1960s and by white flight after that, mean that Black Alabamians have far less wealth than their white peers.
In 2018, we surveyed 980 Alabamians about their experience with fines and fees and how they hurt people, undermine public safety, and drive Alabama’s racial wealth divide. Read the report.
How Alabama’s destructive practice of suspending driver’s licenses for unpaid traffic debt hurts people & slows economic progress. Read the report.