On Tuesdays in the district court on the third floor of the courthouse in Wailuku, our criminal justice system can look something like a debt collection agency.

Long after some are found guilty and sentenced — either after a trial or by pleading guilty — they are ordered to come back to court so the judge can check and see if they complied with the sentence.

It’s called a proof-of-compliance hearing, and the majority seem to all center around unpaid court debt in the form of restitution, fines, or court fees.

The clerk calls a name, and a person steps forward to ask for more time to pay off their debt. There is a depressing uniformity. Times are hard; money is short; and rent and food come first. The judge encourages them to keep paying in increments, and then orders them to come back months later to see if it’s paid off then.

Other times, the judge is unhappy. There’s been no attempt to pay off the debt. The person is admonished for not trying and ordered to come back. The judge wants a good-faith effort.

But the worst part is when a name is called, and no one steps forward. For a moment the courtroom is silent. The judge learns the debt remains unpaid. The prosecutor without missing a beat asks for an arrest warrant and the judge obliges.

Now someone has court debt and a bench warrant. Once found by the police, they’re arrested on the spot. If they can’t bail out, they go before the judge in chains. On Maui, prosecutors usually charge the person with a new crime for failing to show up at the hearing.

Desperate to get out, they almost always take the state’s offer to plead guilty in exchange for their immediate release. That still doesn’t fix the unpaid debt. The judge orders a new proof-of-compliance hearing, the person is released, and is expected to come back if they don’t pay up.

These hearings are not unique to Wailuku. They are in nearly every courthouse in the country. Court fees are baked into the criminal legal system. Hawaii is no exception.

Some are unique to the offense.

There’s a fee for drug offenses. That money funds treatment programs — even if you don’t go to treatment. Then there’s the neurotrauma surcharge fee for certain traffic offenses — even when there’s been no collision or evidence of neurotrauma. Nevertheless, the fee is levied to fund education efforts on brain and spinal injuries.

Then there are fees that apply in every case — no matter what. For 25 years now, whether it’s on top of a fine for littering or in addition to life without parole for murder in the first degree, the judge must consider the crime victim compensation fee.

The amount depends on the severity of the crime. Felony offenses range anywhere from $105 to $505. Misdemeanors are $55 and petty misdemeanors are $30.

Where does that money go?

This fee funds the Crime Victim Compensation Commission. The commission was set up in the late ‘60s to give some financial relief to crime victims. They review their claims for compensation and determine an award or reimbursement.

In 1998, the Legislature wanted to make the commission more self-reliant and less dependent on appropriations from the general fund. The mandatory court fee was born. It meant that the Judiciary now assesses and collects funding for the commission. It also means that anyone sentenced to any crime are still required to fund a government agency that had no involvement in their case.

The commission knows how dependent it is on the fee and puts the pressure on judges to rigorously collect. In its annual report to the Legislature last year, the commission lamented that the judges were not doing their part in collecting the fee.

In the 2022 fiscal year, the commission got $400,396.52 from the compensation fee — the second lowest amount since the creation of the fee itself. It conducted a survey of misdemeanor cases in the Honolulu family courts and found it was ordered only 24% of the time. In the district family court on Kauai, however, it was ordered every single time. In other words, every defendant sentenced in the district family court on Kauai last year was ordered to pay the fee.

The commission viewed this as a “disparate collection practice” and concluded that the “Judiciary applies no uniform standards in ordering” the fee. The commission vowed to “closely monitor whether judges are ordering the Compensation Fee in all eligible cases.”

While it’s unclear in the report what “eligible case” means, the fee cannot be imposed when you can’t afford to pay it. If the defendant is too poor to pay the fee on top of a fine or classes or jail, then the judge simply cannot order it.

This puts the Judiciary in a bind and highlights the problem that arises when judges are supposed to be funding government agencies. Most criminal defendants can’t afford to pay the fee. Most are indigent. They usually involve those who are already vulnerable, financially strapped, and desperate.

Despite the lofty purposes for these special funds, trying to get money from people caught up in the criminal legal system to fund statewide agencies and programs is unrealistic. It’s wasteful too. The operational costs of holding endless proof-of-compliance hearings and the costs of holding people in custody for missing a court date make little financial sense.

I also sympathize with the commission. Relying on a court fee imposed on every financially solvent criminal defendant to fund a state agency is far from an ideal fiscal plan. Naturally, the commission would want to ensure that courts are collecting the fee in every “eligible” case.

But courts aren’t built to generate revenue. Judges are supposed to resolve cases, adjudicate claims, and, whenever possible, strive for justice. Abolishing court fees relieves both the commission and the judges from the pressure of collecting funds from ordinary people.

Agencies need to be funded from the general fund and grants — not from the folks who must return time and time again to the courthouse under threat of an arrest warrant and explain why they can’t afford to fund the government.