Texas Financial Obligations Project Goals & Strategies for Idaho to Consider

1. Texas Financial Obligations Project Goals & Strategies for Idaho to Consider Carl Reynolds Texas Office of Court Administration January 24, 2008

2. Trigger for Project: OCA Leadership in Related Area

3. A fine is a punishment and not a “BILL.” The payment is the defendant’s responsibility. It is expected that the defendant must sacrifice to pay. The defendant must give payment the highest priority. The defendant must expect consequences if payment is not made. The defendant needs to understand the consequences. The payment is a Court Order, a sentence which may not be convenient. A court is not where people prefer to spend money. But, many people come to court with money. Collection Program Principals of Understanding

4. Collection Program Ten Key Components • Staff or staff time dedicated to collection activities. This may include county or city employees or contract employees. • Expectation that all court costs, fees, and fines are generally due at the time of sentencing or pleading. • In most cases, defendants unable to pay in full on the day of sentencing or pleading are required to complete an application for extension of time to pay. • Application information is verified and evaluated to establish an appropriate payment plan for the defendant. • Payment terms are usually strict (e.g., 50% of the total amount due must be paid within 48 hours; 80% within 30 days; and 100% within 60 days).

5. Collection Program Ten Key Components • Alternative enforcement options (e.g., community service) are available for those who do not qualify for a payment plan. • Defendants are closely monitored for compliance, and action is taken promptly for non-compliance. • Actions include telephone contact, letter notification, and possible issuance of warrant. • A county or city may contract with a private attorney or a public or private vendor for the provision of collection services on delinquent cases (61+ days), after in-house collection efforts are exhausted. • Application of statutorily permitted collection remedies, such as programs for non-renewal of driver’s license or vehicle registration. • Issue and serve warrants, as appropriate.

6. Texas Work Group • Office of Court Administration • Carl Reynolds, Administrative Director, 463-1626 • Mary Cowherd, Deputy Director, 463-1629 • Jim Lehman, Collections Program Manager, 936-0991 • Russ Duncan, Assistant Collections Specialist, 936-7555 • Ted Wood, Assistant General Counsel, 936-1183 • Andy Barbee, Research Specialist, 936-0227 • Office of Attorney General, Child Support Enforcement Division • Michael Hayes, and/or Thomas Cruz • Texas Department of Criminal Justice • Pam Thielke, Director-Specialized Programs, Parole Division 406-5778 • Justice Center, Council of State Governments • Dr. Tony Fabelo, 507-6653, Austin Office (tfabelo@csg.org) • Jamie Yoon, 212-482-2320 (jyoon@csg.org)

7. Goals of Project • Create cohesive framework to understand child support, victim restitution, fines and fees requirements and polices. • Identify gaps in policy impacting collection • Identify coordination and prioritization issues among policies and agencies • Identify operational/administrative changes within OCA or other participating agencies that can improve the administration of policies in this area • Acquire data from the Child Support, Parole and Workforce that can be used to: • Create a “financial obligation” profile for offenders on probation and parole that includes court, probation fees and child support obligations • Develop a “debt to income” model that can be used by OCA to estimate the impact of new proposed fees on specific types of offenders and conduct policy analysis in this area • Determine areas in need of further policy development • Create a model, following private sector credit rating model experience, to: • Understand “financial risk factors” that may relate to “default” and recidivism risks • Understand “financial load” of a typical set of offenders to model the impact of the imposition of new obligations • Provide impact analysis to the legislature

8. Parolees and Felony Probationers FY 2007 Placements and Terminations Credit Bureau What type of credit does the population have? Workforce Commission What type of employment does the population have? Attorney General Does the population have child support obligations? What type of offense related financial obligations does the population have? Data Sources Used to Build Financial Obligations ProfileFor Felons Under Community Supervision Primary Secondary

9. Parole Target Population • Statewide data will be gathered for all terms of parole that began and all terms of parole that ended between September 1, 2006 and August 31, 2007. • A record layout has been agreed upon, and TDCJ programmers should be in the process of actually querying the data for subsequent submission to OCA.

10. Probation Target Population • Travis County data will be gathered for all terms of felony probation that began and all terms of felony probation that ended between September 1, 2006 and August 31, 2007. • Probation data have been received from Travis County. • Need to finalize selection criteria for appropriate felony probation population, and to ensure proper understanding of the many variables available in the data. • Need to discuss possibility of enlisting other adult probation departments in the research project.

11. Match Records from Multiple Entities to Build a Robust Profile of the Financial Obligations, Employment and Income Characteristics of Felony Offenders Supervised in the Community • The key to matching the offender data with these other databases is obtaining name, race, sex, date of birth and social security number.

12. Notes • Necessary steps will need to be taken to ensure necessary level of information is provided, specifically demographic information such as name and social security number. Without basic identifying data, desired data matching will not be possible. • OCA is looking into the legality of sharing identifying information obtained by a state agency with a private vendor providing credit-related information (Fair Credit Reporting Act, 2004). • Assuming aforementioned issues are resolved, the matching procedure will be as follows: • Provide offender datasets to private vendor to acquire credit-related information; • After adding credit-related information, data will be passed to the Office of the Attorney General (OAG) to add relevant records for those offenders with child support orders involving the OAG; • After adding child support information, data will be passed to the Texas Workforce Commission (TWC) to add records containing relevant employment information. • OCA is currently exploring possibility of OAG providing employment-related information through a data sharing protocol they already have in place with the TWC.

13. Texas Financial Obligations Project Goals & Strategies for Idaho to Consider Questions, Comments, Observations Carl Reynolds carl.reynolds@courts.state.tx.us (512) 463-1626