HB 1412 Legal Financial Obligations
In 2018, the legislature passed a bill reducing legal financial obligations (LFO) imposed on defendants convicted of crimes. At that time, LFO legislation was one of the priorities identified at the 2017 Justice Summit. LFO’s are court costs and other financial costs that recently incarcerated people are required to pay after release, and they can deter them from paying other costs such as housing or job searches. HB 1412 would reduce these costs even more because it:
- Allows a court to refrain from imposing or waive full or partial restitution and accrued interest owed to any insurer or entity that is not an individual if the offender does not have the means to pay.
- Allows a court to not impose interest on restitution after inquiring into and considering specified factors and input of the victim.
- Revises standards for the waiver of accrued interest on restitution and non-restitution obligations.
- Revises the time periods in which judgments for restitution and non restitution legal financial obligations may be enforced.
- Establishes a revised standard of indigency for purposes of a number of provisions applicable to legal financial obligations.
Take Action: you can contact your representatives to support the bill by clicking on the bill number, HB 1412, which will take you to the bill information page on the legislative website. Then click on “Comment on this Bill,” fill in details to find your reps, and indicate that you support the bill. Below are some the comments made during hearings on February 3, 2021.
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Anita Khandelwal, director of the King County Department of Public Defense and an advocate of the proposal, said in an email: “We’re continuing to work with the community on an ordinance that would allow people to tell their full story in court and we continue to discuss this legislation with council members. It reflects an important effort to make a racially disproportionate and expensive system into one that is less harmful to our community.”
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