Eliminating a fee for medical services while behind bars at the Shelby County Corrections Center is part of a comprehensive review of fines and fees in all parts of the local criminal justice system and even in the civil court system.

The recent move came as the administration of Shelby County Mayor Lee Harris joined the group “Cities and Counties for Fine and Fee Justice” — a national network of local governments.

Shelby County Chief of Staff Danielle Inez describes the county’s involvement in the national effort as “a deep dive into all of the various fines and fees that we have in place that might negatively impact individuals who are incarcerated or who may have some interaction with our criminal justice or civil system.”

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“Fines and fees are plentiful,” Inez said during The Daily Memphian’s On The Record podcast. “So there is a lot of work to do. I think our perspective is just to chip away at it as best we can while we are here in this role.”

Hear the interview in its entirety as part of this article.

Dropping the medical services fee in the corrections center was an easy goal because corrections is a division within the county administration.

So the administration didn’t have to interact with the elected officials outside the county administration, consult state laws and rules and make links to different parts of government that would have to give their approval as well.

“The difficult thing for us in Shelby County is a lot of the fines and fees, we discovered, are really prioritized by the state,” Inez said. “They are funneled through at the county level but they are really state-driven.”

“For the sake of the program and trying to make a difference, we tried to identify fines and fees that our levied at the local level, completely controlled at the local level and the funds go into the (county) general fund and just seeing where we can quickly make changes,” she said. “It’s just so obvious those fines and those fees aren’t needed.”

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In the case of the medical fees, it was a $13,000 revenue line item for county government.

“The pandemic shed light on that issue, and it just simply doesn’t make any sense,” Inez said. “That’s something that existed for years and years and the case was made over a decade ago probably that this will help keep people from going to see the doctor. We want them to go see the doctor.”

She said there has been no evidence that prisoners at the corrections center have abused the process.

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Potential abuse by prisoners was something cited when the fee was put in place, and it was also cited as a factor when the county began looking into whether the COVID virus was spreading behind bars as the pandemic reached its peak in Shelby County.

Anne Stuhldreher, director of the city of San Francisco’s Office of Financial Justice — which helped form the national coalition — said the goal isn’t to eliminate all fines and fees.

“Fines and fees have always been with us. I think they will be with us moving forward,” she said on the same podcast. “We think they should be equitable.”

The coalition is holding a two-day “boot camp” next month in Phoenix for local governments reviewing their fines and fees.

The city of San Francisco did away with the suspension of driver’s licenses for missing court dates on traffic offenses and charging a $50 a month fee for being on probation as well as a $35 a day rental fee for ankle monitors.

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“So people were getting out of jail. They were on probation,” Stuhldreher said. “They were being punished in all sorts of ways, but their debt wasn’t paid.”

“They were a terrible source of revenue,” she said of the fees involved. “I think the collection rate on one of the larger fees — the probation fee — was just 9%. … We really found they were high pain and low gain.”

Shelby County has a similar probation fee.

The criminal justice system locally is a combination of state and local elected officials outside the county administration who all have some degree of autonomy.

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Changing policies means a lot of meetings and a lot of different leaders saying yes.

In the past, the efforts, like the gradual move to reduce and then eliminate expungement fees, met with resistance from some of those leaders who argued they could not give up the revenue stream that helped them meet their budgets.

“There have been a lot of studies done at the national level that really speak to operationally your operation should not rely on punitive fees and fines for you to be able to operate successfully,” Inez said. “As government … we have to build operations that are really driven by revenue by taxpayers — property taxes, sales taxes — and really providing the services we need through mechanisms that aren’t punitive.”

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It can be difficult to find where fines and fees are used because it is “interwoven” in budgets, she said. And for those incarcerated or being held pending trial, their families on the outside often end up having to come up with the money.

“These fees or fines may bring in a little bit of revenue,” Stuhldreher said. “But there’s just the larger cost that they place on people’s families.”

Inez said her recent discussions with leaders of other parts of the system locally haven’t been about preserving revenue streams.

“You have to check in with the sheriff. You have to get approval from the County Commission,” she said. “If it’s going to involve judges, you need their support as well. The public defender’s office, the district attorney — you have to get buy-in from all these people.”

That means a process that might take a week if not for all of the bureaucratic hoops to jump through can take three to four months.

“The reason why I’m less inclined today … to say that’s a bad thing is because it ultimately, usually makes the outcome a lot better when you have those perspectives,” Inez said. “I usually find people who are eager to address a problem. But they might ask questions from a different perspective than I would. The sheriff has some exposure to jail operations. I don’t.”