When you are found guilty of a misdemeanor in New Mexico, fees can be added to your fine, among them a $3 traffic safety education fee, a $5 domestic violence offender treatment fee or an $85 DWI lab fee, depending on your crime.
These fees — which are not part of the punishment intended by any fines imposed by the court — have important and worthy origins. They help defray the administrative costs of running the court, fund education and treatment programs, and help pay for important pieces of the judiciary system, including ignition-interlock devices, ankle bracelets, juries and witnesses, and specialty courts.
And they do add up.
The 19 fees NM courts collect in criminal and traffic cases provide $8.15 million for court-related programs and $8.4 million for non-court programs, including the crime victim reparation fund, a brain injury fund and the Albuquerque crime lab.
Despite all this, the Administrative Office of the Courts is proposing eliminating all fees for misdemeanor crimes and traffic offenses. Officials argue court fees place an added burden on criminals, cause some to commit new crimes to pay court costs and others to choose jail to satisfy court fees.
Those arguments ignore the realities: Defendants who are serving time in jail receive a credit of $98 for each day served to pay court debt. Those who owe fees also can sign up for a payment plan or do community service picking up weeds and litter instead. Interestingly, AOC could not supply a number of people jailed just to pay court fees.
The stronger point made by AOC Director Artie Pepin is that court fees are an unstable source of funding for programs. He wants lawmakers to appropriate $16 million to replace fee revenues from misdemeanor convictions and traffic violations. That sum might be worth considering for the courts — but as an addition to the court fees collected. Don’t forget that lawmakers will be rolling in dough when they convene in January with $2.5 billion in “new money” on top of revenues leftover from this fiscal year’s record-setting $8.5 billion budget.
But, remember, oil and gas booms do eventually go bust. And money isn’t the core issue here. Who pays court costs is.
State Rep. Bill Rehm notes that eliminating all court fees would shift court administrative costs from criminals to law-abiding citizens. The Albuquerque lawmaker makes a good point that court fees are really “user fees” — they are assessed only on those who have been before the court and only on those who have been convicted.
It is wrong to expect law-abiding taxpayers to pick up the entire tab of a drunken driver’s interlock or the ankle bracelet for a serial shoplifter or domestic violence offender. Again, the fees are not intended as punishment; that’s what the fine or jail sentence is for. The fees instead can be looked at as a way to give convicted offenders the opportunity to make reparations for the trouble and expense they have caused by their actions.
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And, while inability to pay can be a very real issue, payment plans and community service allow leeway while ensuring offenders bear some of the burden they have created for the court, the legal system, their victims and society.
Lawmakers should keep this in mind if they choose to pursue AOC’s misguided proposal. Asking the public to go easier on convicted criminals when we are in the throes of a crime wave are bad optics indeed.
This editorial first appeared in the . It was written by members of the editorial board and is unsigned as it represents the opinion of the newspaper rather than the writers.
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