This interview was edited for length and clarity
DEBT FREE JUSTICE: What are fees and fines?
MARCUS JARVIS: So fees and fines are monetary sanctions that are used to sometimes replace punishment and, a lot of times, as a double punishment. It’s an extra slap on top of the slap of whatever punishment you get. You may do a certain amount of time in the placement, and then you have to pay a certain amount of money on top of doing that time. So it's just one of those parts of the legal system that beats people up, in my opinion.
DFJ: Why do you feel that fees and fines should be eliminated?
MARCUS: Young people don't have the ability to work, to earn enough money to pay [court fees and fines]. The general young person that gets in trouble is usually from, a lot of times, they're in a community, or they're in a family that's already lacking. Getting in trouble is indicative of a family being in a bad situation. So you already have somebody in a bad situation, like somebody steals food from a store ‘cause they're hungry, then you find that person who already didn't have enough money to feed themselves. It's kind of like a double tax on somebody who doesn't have anything. You're taxing somebody who can't even file income taxes, basically. Like you can't get anything. Kids don't get anything back. As a foster kid, the government told me so many times that they couldn't pay for this or they weren't gonna pay for that, and they don't have money for this, and they don't have money for that. So it's kind of crazy how they expect other people, parents, to pay for stuff. When as a foster child, I didn't get a lot of things. I didn't have a lot of needs met, and then they left me with a lot of fines that I had to wait until I turned 18, and then, you know, they put them on me.
DFJ: Why is it important for you to talk about this issue?
MARCUS: A lot of people don't, you know, what's going on, or they don't know about the issue. And I feel like a big part of helping people to get the system to change. People don't understand how ridiculous it is because not everybody has kids. Not everybody has been in a messed up financial situation to be able to understand the severity if you're a single parent who makes $1,200 a month and your rent is $900, and your bills are $300, and then you get a fine for $200; it's like now you're choosing between rent bills, electric, gas or this fine which could have your child locked up. A lot of people don't understand, and getting people to know that this issue affects the entire community is important.
I was released, and I was arrested for not paying the money that I owed for being in the jail. So I didn't commit a crime. I didn't do anything to anybody. I was just stopped by the police ‘cause the police love to stop black people just walking down the street. And they said I had a warrant, and my warrant was for non-payment of fines for being in jail. So I went to jail for not paying, for being in jail.
DFJ: How can the government support youth and families in this situation?
MARCUS: Every young person that grows up with all of these funds in their back is another person that is not able to assimilate into society as a normal person. People don't even wanna work because they're like, I owe too much money to start working for $10 an hour, and I owe thousands of dollars already. It kind of incentivizes people to do illegal things. It incentivizes our young people to commit crimes, and if you ask a person for a certain amount of money and they're gonna go and try to do it, they try to rob a bank to get that money. Who, whose fault is that? We not giving them a way to make any money legally.
DFJ: What can allies and advocates do?
MARCUS: There are a lot of different ways that a person who is just stepping into the field of debt-free justice and finding out about the issue can help. There are multiple layers; it depends on where you're at in life, and where you may be able to help. It could just be donating some time, or you could donate financially to an organization that's working on this issue, connecting with the org, signing up on the website, finding out how you can help in your area, finding out what's going on, stay tuned with the social media, finding out what you can do to help in these other areas because we're doing work in a lot of different states, so although it may be a lot better in wherever you are at, there's always places that need a lot more support, and they need more people.
DFJ: What is the most outrageous example of a fee or fine?
MARCUS: Yeah, I would say, paying for being incarcerated. We have a lot of different circumstances where the person who is incarcerated has to pay directly for their incarceration per day. I had a certain amount that I had to pay per day for being incarcerated in a Lackawanna County Prison. I was released, and I was arrested for not paying the money that I owed for being in jail. So I didn't commit a crime. I didn't do anything to anybody. I was just stopped by the police ‘cause the police love to stop black people just walking down the street. And they said I had a warrant, and my warrant was for non-payment of fines for being in jail. So I went to jail for not paying, for being in jail. I did an entire month, and I had to work in a recycling program to pay off $50 a day, and then I was released once my $1,200 was paid off.
A lot of people don't understand that a lot of these systems are like, indentured servitude or forced labor camps, and when you think of forced labor camps, and it makes you think of other countries. But no, we have forced labor camps here in America. I worked in one for a month, and there's thousands of people doing that forced labor camp work as we speak.
Mine was personally owing money for being in prison. But there's so many different monetary sanctions a person can be put down, there's people who are literally being forced to pay off this money, especially people that owe 50, 15, a hundred million dollars to the government. That is literal indentured servitude because it's a certain type of debt that you will never come out of. How much do you take out of this person's check? They're never gonna have a net worth. You're basically telling the person that you're gonna work until you die, and you're gonna owe the government all of this money.
I pay taxes. I know a lot of people that pay taxes already to fund these systems. So when you say we have to charge these kids to make the systems run, I just can't believe that. Fund the system in different ways because taking money out of the pockets of people who only have linen is just impossible. You can't get water out of an empty well, and that's what the government is doing when they try to take money from a poor person.
DFJ: How do these monetary sanctions affect individuals and families?
MARCUS: It affects the person's ability to raise children. It affects a person's ability to be able to tell their kid they can play football or basketball. It affects what options a person has. A lot of people don't even have the opportunity to play any sport because their parent may owe money, and that’s money they would've paid towards playing basketball or football or anything. You know, that's the thing that really hurts for me is just knowing that it's so many kids that instead of putting them in a music program or a camp or anything positive, we're taking this money from them, we're taking their first job that a lot of these kids get. We’re taking their first check. What that does do to a person if they work for the first time in their life when they get one check, and you're taking the entire check, and they don't even understand the concept of money in the first place? It's just so dis disheartening to know that, as a country, we just don't care about kids. Kids need financial support on so many levels that they don't get, because there's no such thing as base-level income. They're getting rid of like cash assistance on so many different levels, and so many different states, and all that does is just affect a kid's ability to survive and thrive. I just wish that kids had more opportunities to become successful adults. If a kid has talent and playing football, they should be able to play football and not be forced to. Instead of buying themselves cleats and pads, they gotta pay money to fund the system that we already pay.
I pay taxes. I know a lot of people that pay taxes already to fund these systems. So when you say we have to charge these kids to make the systems run, I just can't believe that. Fund the system in different ways because taking money out of the pockets of people who only have linen is just impossible. You can't get water out of an empty well, and that's what the government is doing when they try to take money from a poor person. Like, “Hey, give me a thousand dollars,” and this person ain't never seen a thousand dollars in their life. Ain't nothing in their house cost a thousand dollars. You’re on government housing, and your rent might be $83, but you going to tell 'em, gimme a thousand dollars.
DFJ: What does Debt Free Justice mean to you?
MARCUS: For me, Debt Free Justice is a vision of what the juvenile justice system should be like. The last word–justice–there is no justice in the current justice system. It is more like just a legal system or an enslavement system. If a person does something wrong, addressing the situation at hand and not doing extra things that are not directly associated with what justice is. Like me, owing $1,200 for being incarcerated, that literally took two jobs away from me. That wasn't helping me as a felon who just started working. So that wasn't any justice; that just put me in debt. So I feel like Debt Free Justice is giving the system a chance to actually be the justice system.
