Rep. Chris England, D-Tuscaloosa, speaks on the floor of the Alabama House of Representatives on Jan. 27, 2026 at the Alabama Statehouse in Montgomery, Alabama. The House Judiciary Committee passed a bill sponsored by England aiming to make it more likely that crime victims will receive compensation. (Brian Lyman/Alabama Reflector)
An Alabama House committee approved legislation last week aiming at making victims of crime more likely to receive restitution.
HB 481, sponsored by Rep. Chris England, D-Tuscaloosa, requires any money collected from people convicted of a crime to be first allocated toward restitution for victim compensation, before payments are distributed to fines, fees and court costs.
“I filed it a few weeks ago,” England said in an interview last Wednesday. “I think the public would be shocked to find out that while the system is set up to do two things, punish people and compensate victims who are victims of crime, the last thing that gets paid after court costs and everything else are victims.”
The House Judiciary Committee approved the bill on a voice vote. It goes to the full House for consideration. There are ten days left in the 2026 regular session.
England said he wants to reorder the priority to make victims of crime the focus when the court orders them to be paid.
The court may order that victims be paid first, and the court clerks must reprogram the system to allow for that. But in most cases, the system by default makes court costs and related functions the priority, so that all the money paid by the individual because of the crime remains with the court and not to the victim.
“One of the most surprising findings to me was that the default priority system built into State Judicial Information System actually has victims as priority number 99, it is at the very bottom of the list after all buckets are filled,” said Leah Nelson, one of the authors of a report published last fall by Manpower Demonstration Research Corporation on fines and fees in Alabama. “What that means in reality, our research shows, is that victims are highly unlikely to get paid, and they are very unlikely to get paid in a timely fashion.”
Victims may also not be compensated because most who encounter the court system are lower income individuals who are not likely to have the money to pay the fines and fees they owe. Many individuals who default on their obligations face an additional 30% charge, distributed to the district attorney’s office.
In those cases, the first half of the payment will be shared between the district attorney and the court, and the other half will go toward restitution, even if the judge orders the payments to focus on restitution. Only after the court costs are paid will the payments be completely directed to the victim through restitution.
If the judge does not prioritize restitution and an additional 30% charge is imposed, all court costs must be satisfied before the victim is paid anything.
That virtually ensures that most of the money that is paid at a given point never reaches the victim.
“The Citizens Trust Fund, which goes to the American Village in Montevallo, anything that receives money from fines and fees is higher than victims in the default priority system,” Nelson said.
Peter Jones, an associate professor in the Department of Political Science and Public Administration at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, said that the state relies on fines and fees from people who have been convicted of a crime to pay for several government functions, from court costs and operations but also for operating expenses that include the General Fund budget.
“Almost half of all fines and fees go back to the General Fund,” Jones said. “The General Fund is used, in some ways, to fund courts, to fund judges, and all these other areas.”
That means much of the money from general revenues is returned to the courts and to the criminal legal system indirectly, whether the money is earmarked to the Alabama Department of Public Health or the Alabama Department of Corrections.
“The Alabama Department of Education may get money from fines and fees for different educational components to divert people or deal more with juveniles,” Jones said.
During the committee meeting, Rep. David Faulkner, R-Mountain Brook, said he preferred a sliding scale that would allow the courts to collect some of fees and fines as the victim continued to receive restitution.
“You are not going to collect court costs,” said Rep. David Faulkner, R-Mountain Brook during the committee meeting. “You are never going to collect court costs, and fees, because if you have a $100,000 theft, and that is the restitution, and somebody is going to be paying that at $5 per month, the court is never going to get its court costs.”
Jones said that cases that involve restitution are not a large percentage of the cases overall, so the impact could be less than expected.
England said that creates a situation in which the victim and the court are then competing for funding. The goal of the court is to punish the person who was convicted while ensuring that the victim is made whole.
“The awful question is as the state of Alabama continues to reduce court funding and increase the burden on defendants to pay for the court system, the priority, which should be to compensate victims for their loss, takes a back seat to the reality that courts need funding.
“At the end of the day, victims, who are here by no choice of their own, have to be the priority,” he said.
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Author: Ralph Chapoco