Punishing Poverty: The High Cost of Fines, Fees & Restitution and Their Impact on the Poor

This virtual conversation will look into today’s unfair and biased trend of criminalizing poor people impacted by the criminal legal system, discuss the practice of a system that does not consider an individual’s economic status and ability to pay, and assess how a trend has led to today’s modern debtors’ prisons, how these financial burdens keep justice-involved people in poverty and increase their likelihood of returning to the system and will discuss solutions on how to fix a system that has profited far too long off the poverty of poor people.

Moderator

Waleisah Wilson
Client Services Advocate
Southern Center for Human Rights

Panelists

Tiffany Williams Roberts
Public Policy Director
Southern Center for Human Rights

Bill Paul
Executive Director
Restore Georgia

Ray Khalfani
Policy Analyst, Worker Justice & Criminal Legal Systems
Georgia Budget and Policy Institute