By Andrew M., Plaintiff in SBX V. County of Riverside

I was in 8^th grade when it happened. I’ll never forget the feeling of those cold, clanky pairs of metal constraints. I was being handcuffed in front of my friends and classmates.

As a lot of middle school students do, I was fooling around with my friends outside at lunch. We found an orange and started kicking it around like a soccer ball. It turns out I picked a bad day to fool around, and a bad person to tick off. A school resource officer – basically a cop – was stationed in the cafeteria, and the makeshift soccer ball made its way through his legs.

He apparently shouted something like “cut it out” to me, but I didn’t hear, so I responded - admittedly, probably with some attitude – “what?” He didn’t like that. Next thing I knew I was in handcuffs, being marched to the principal’s office.

I was really confused at the intensity of the situation. I had never been in real trouble before in my life. To make matters worse, my backpack was searched and they said they found some marijuana in my bag. The whole thing felt a little extreme when all I’d done was kick an orange.

My grandma was called to the school and a bunch of adults hovered over me with intense looks on their faces. I was nervous and confused, even more so when a stack of papers was shoved in front of me. I had no idea what the papers meant, but I was told that I’d be in more trouble if I didn’t sign them. I could get kicked out of school, and that’s what the school staff – you know, the ones who were supposed to be looking out for me – made me think. So I signed them.

It turns out those papers I signed put me in the YAT (Youth Accountability Team) program. My county set the program up to keep kids they viewed as “at-risk” in line. I was assigned a probation officer, even though I had no idea what that meant.

No one explained anything to me or my family. What was the point of this program? What were the instructions? How did I complete it? Who was making it mandatory?

But, like I said, I was in 8^th grade. I just didn’t want to get in more trouble, so I signed the papers, like I was told to.

I was apparently supposed to be in touch with this officer every week to check in on things. I still didn’t really get what was going on, so I just went about my life the same way. He started showing up to my school, pulling me out of classes, and holding check-ins. He’d ask me about my grades, what I was up to. It felt weird to me that he was asking how my grades were as he was taking me out of class.

I don’t know much about the criminal justice system, so the word “probation” meant little to me other than what I heard in TV shows or on the news. I knew it meant something bad. Something that happened to people when they committed crimes.

So why was I on probation when I was never convicted of a crime? Why didn’t my school just deal with the situation instead of sending me under the supervision of someone I didn’t know, without any direction on how this should all play out?

My family was really happy when we started working with the ACLU. I didn’t know the inner workings of this system, but I knew something was wrong with it. I knew that kids shouldn’t have been treated the way I was. There was no way it was the most productive thing for me or for the school.

My attorneys told me that Riverside County is going to fundamentally change its system, so that kids who act like kids aren’t thrown into this confusing and extreme process like I was. I’m really happy about that. I can’t change how my situation was handled, but now I know that kids in the future won’t go through the same thing.

Erica Smith was making a fresh start. After being forced out of her home by domestic violence, she had spent the last three years cycling between homelessness and jail for petty offenses. But with the help of reentry organization Starting Over Inc., she finally secured stable housing and a job helping women who had experienced challenges like hers. She found community support in the Riverside chapter of All of Us or None. She was building a better life for herself and her daughter.

Then her employer got the notice: the state was trying to garnish her wages for unpaid court debt. Erica was confused. She had served her time — hadn't she already paid her debt? Erica then discovered that she owed thousands of dollars in administrative fees related to her old court cases: booking fees, citation processing fees, conviction assessment fees. The court had been sending the collection notices to her old address, where she hadn't lived for years. When she didn't respond (because she never saw the notices), the court just kept tacking on additional fees for "failure to pay."

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Every day, hundreds of thousands of Californians like Erica face bills for a multitude of fees attached to every stage of the criminal system: public defender fees, probation supervision fees, fees for mandatory drug tests, and electronic ankle monitors. When people can't afford to pay off all their fees immediately, they are billed for even more: installment account fees, collection fees, interest, then assessments for "failure to pay."

Although the people haunted by such fees experience them as a second punishment, that's not what they're supposed to be. The fees are imposed in addition to the fines, labor, and/or incarceration that the court assigns to a convicted person as punishment. Fees exist to generate revenue for government programs.

For decades, some politicians have tried to fill the state's coffers using the criminal system in this way — with money made off the backs of the most vulnerable Californians. This method of generating revenue is, in the words of a recent New York Times columnist, "downright depraved." It is also hopelessly inefficient.

Fees are an unreliable source of revenue. The vast majority of people who owe fees simply cannot afford to pay them. As a result, collection rates are low; counties sometimes end up spending more to collect fees than they bring in. For example, in 2017, Alameda County had a collection rate of only 4% for probation supervision fees. The county lost $1.3 million dollars trying to collect court-ordered debt.

Even when people manage to scrape together payments, it comes at great cost. While people struggle to pay off their fees in installments, the outstanding debt continues to harm their credit and limit employment opportunities, which in turn makes it harder for them to secure the means to pay. Entire families must choose between debt payments and necessities like rent, groceries, or health care. A study by the Ella Baker Center found that family members, usually mothers and wives, end up paying criminal system debt. In all these ways and more, fees put pressure on the social safety net and create devastating barriers for people at the exact time they're trying to get their lives on track.

The burden of these fees falls heaviest on Black and brown communities, who are over-surveilled, over-policed, over-arrested, over-convicted, and whose members spend disproportionately more time on probation and parole. The criminal fees system worsens the racial wealth gap, dividing Californians along lines of class and race in ways that harm us all.

But California has an opportunity to unite to forge a more just and equitable path. This year, State Senator Holly Mitchell (D-Los Angeles) introduced SB 144, the Families Over Fees Act, to "remove the economic shackles" of administrative fees. The bill, sponsored by the Debt Free Justice California coalition, would eliminate a wide range of fees.

It's time for California to find a more just and sustainable way to finance government — one that enables all Californians to thrive. Let's start by passing SB 144.

You can do your part to make sure the California Legislature passes SB 144:

Contact your state representative and ask them to vote YES on SB 144 to give Californians a fighting chance to succeed.