Where does all the money go?

Sass is looking for the money

Whenever a defendant gets convicted of a crime in Wisconsin, the judge will soak the defendant with seemingly innumerable fines, costs, fees, and surcharges.  There’s the DNA surcharge (even if the defendant has already given a DNA sample and has already paid the fee in a previous case), a Domestic Violence surcharge in many cases, “victim-witness” fees, of course fines, and a plethora of other financial hits.  These things will appear on the judgment of conviction in acronym form—no one even knows what the acronyms stand for, and few people care because there’s not much we can do about it anyway.  In addition to fines, examples include the imposition of the CCFP, CLD, VW, DNAAS, GT, SFOTH, PEN, and DOMAB costs, fees, and surcharges!

What?!  What the hell are those things?  But, more importantly, where does all of that money go?  Are our criminal courts actually profit centers?  Does that create a conflict of interest?  I don’t know.  But I did just learn where the money goes when Louisiana’s criminal courts impose such financial hits. 

As this article explains, in Louisiana, the money sometimes goes straight to the judges who impose the fines, costs, and surcharges, and sometimes the money is used for “luxury cars and rooms at the Ritz Carlton.”  That sounds scandalous—almost Enron-esque!

At a minimum, this does seem to be a conflict of interest.  The judge decides how big of a fine or how many costs to impose, and then that money gets used for the judge’s own luxury items?  And even when the judges spend the money on non-personal items, the conflict, or at least the appearance of a conflict, is still there.  For example: “They [judges] are only just supposed to make decisions based on the facts and circumstances in your case . . . But in Louisiana that is not really possible because the court depends on fines and costs to pay for staff salaries, utilities, postage, building maintenance and repairs, transcripts, insurance—basically all the operating expenses of the court. And that is giving judges this incentive to set high bond, to convict you, to impose the maximum fine and costs, to threaten to jail you if you don’t pay.”

Now, other than watching the LSU Tigers college football team, I don’t have a strong interest in Louisiana.  Besides, Garrett Hazelwood seems to have that state covered with his fine, independent, investigative journalism.  But I am curious as to how much the Wisconsin courts pull in on all of those fines and acronym-based costs, fees, and surcharges.  And, most importantly: Where does all the money actually go? 

This could be a job for the Kenosha County Eye.  (And a hat tip to Atty. Mo Hernandez for sending me the article on Louisiana.)