Driving along Georgia highways, it is easy to spot a common pattern: municipal police cruisers
are often strategically stationed near sudden drops in the speed limit so they can ticket
drivers who don’t quickly decrease their speeds. Rather than promoting highway safety, this type
of policing reflects a troubling practice of “taxation by citation” throughout Georgia.
Many of the state’s cash-strapped cities and towns undermine civil liberties and the core
objectives of law enforcement by relying on traffic tickets and municipal fines to boost their
budgets.
Georgia isn’t alone. The small town of Brookside, Alabama, recently made
national headlines
for its revenue-oriented policing practices. Victims of the town’s aggressive pursuit of law enforcement
revenue allege that the Brookside police department violated their civil rights and fabricated charges.
Reporting by AL.com
showed that Brookside’s revenue from fines and forfeitures increased by more than 649% over a two-year
period to make up half the town’s budget by 2020. The 1,253-person town’s government used the revenue
to aggressively expand its police department in pursuit of additional citation revenue, hiring several
new law enforcement officers and acquiring a SWAT-style riot control vehicle.
Ultimately, the media attention and public outrage prompted Brookside’s police chief to resign,
spurred an investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice, and earned the team of AL.com
journalists who broke the story
a Pulitzer Prize this year.
Law enforcement revenues in Brookside were well beyond that of most similarly sized local
governments nationwide. On average, traffic and municipal code revenues
account for just 1%
of local government general revenues.
Yet, as a recent Reason Foundation
analysis
found, Brookside is not an isolated case of “policing for profit.” Cities and towns across the country
routinely derive significant portions of their budgets from law enforcement activities, collecting
an estimated $9 billion from fines and forfeitures in 2020. Nationwide, at least 482 local governments
derived 10% or more of their general revenue from fines and fees in 2017.
A similar 2019
Governing analysis identified 723 high-fine localities with fines and forfeitures revenues “exceeding $100
for every adult resident, while 363 exceeded $200 per adult.”
Local officials often view extracting revenue from traffic and municipal code enforcement as an
attractive alternative to raising taxes. However, this “taxation by citation” can
disproportionately affect low-income individuals and racial minorities.
One doesn’t need to look far to find other towns using fines and fees similarly to Brookside. In
neighboring Georgia, several municipalities derive significant portions of their budgets from
fines and forfeitures each year. Local governments in Georgia collected over $158 million in
fines and forfeitures revenue in 2019*. That same year, 80 municipalities in Georgia reported
fines and forfeitures comprised more than 10% of their budgets. And, in five Georgia
municipalities, fines and forfeitures made up more than 50% of the budget.
At best, this taxation by citation distracts from more pressing matters of public safety. At
worst, it undermines the core responsibilities of police agencies and erodes public trust in law
enforcement. The towns of Warwick, Oliver, and Snellville offer just three examples of
widespread abuse of revenue-generating law enforcement activities in Georgia. We highlight these
towns to illustrate how bad incentives can shape local policing practices to the detriment of
citizens.