Dear Collective, 

 

We write to provide a year-end update on the debt and jail relief made possible by your generous contributions. After launching our project in June of this year, your donations have relieved 6 people of $2,123 in criminal debt and 7 accompanying warrants for arrest. Because of you, 6 fewer people faced potential job loss, hunger, license revocation, and time behind bars in the last six months alone. 

 

We are so grateful for the successes of this project thus far, but we are not naïve to the immense organizing, advocacy, and labor still necessary to put an end to unjust criminal fines and fees. To that end, we are in the process of developing tools for afflicted individuals to represent themselves in appealing their criminal debt and associated warrants. We are forging new relationships between law schools to raise awareness of the issue of criminal fines and fees among budding lawyers across geographical regions. Finally, we are strategizing methods to end certain fines and fees in Oklahoma – a state engaged in fiscal restructuring and criminal justice reform already. 

 

We are excited to continue our organizing efforts to create lasting improvements in the area of criminal fines and fees. In the meantime, we embrace the invaluable relief from debt and incarceration your contributions provide. 

 

Happy Holidays, 

The Fines and Fees Freedom Fund