From Vera Institute of Justice and Governing:
In Alabama, a military veteran bears the burden of a 20-year-old criminal justice debt that has only increased since it was imposed. In California, a home health aide sees her paycheck garnished for a decade to pay back the costs of her time in jail. And in Kansas, a high school student accrues juvenile probation debt that will never expire.
They are just a few of the tens of millions of Americans attempting to pay back legal financial obligations — a crushing form of debt that people owe for fines imposed for an offense, fees attached to the criminal legal process or restitution arising from a criminal case. New research from our organization, the Vera Institute of Justice, documents the reality that the millions of Americans who are struggling to pay down that debt must do so for much longer than they would have to for debt of any other kind.
Most states have statutes of limitations on consumer debt of three to six years, and debts from civil judgments are mostly subject to a 10-year limitation. Vera’s first-of-a-kind, 50-state study of criminal debt statutes of limitations finds that more than two-thirds of states prejudicially set criminal legal debt repayment terms longer than they do for consumer and civil debt burdens — and that this unequal treatment nonetheless fails to produce financial benefits for states.
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