Court Costs, Fees & Surcharges: Assessments, Restitution, and Probation

If you’re convicted, the fine the judge announces is only part of what you owe. Court costs, fees, and surcharges that defendants pay routinely include a mandatory per-count assessment, administrative charges for opening and processing the case, statutory surcharges that fund specific government programs, restitution to any victim, possible reimbursement for a court-appointed attorney, and recurring costs while you’re on probation or supervised release. Unpaid balances grow through interest and penalties, and the government has collection tools most creditors don’t.

The Mandatory Federal Special Assessment

Every federal conviction carries a special assessment the judge cannot waive. For individuals, it’s $5 for an infraction or class C misdemeanor, $10 for a class B misdemeanor, $25 for a class A misdemeanor, and $100 for a felony.{¹}

The important detail is that the assessment applies per count. Convicted on five felony counts, you owe $500 in assessments before any fine, restitution, or other cost is added. These payments feed the Crime Victims Fund and sit at the top of the federal payment priority ladder. Whatever you pay is applied first to the special assessment, then to victim restitution, and only then to fines, penalties, and other costs.{²}

Court Administrative Costs and Prosecution Costs

A federal court can order a convicted defendant to pay the costs of prosecution.{³} This is discretionary and depends on what the government actually spent: witness fees, transcript costs, and other litigation expenses.

State courts layer on their own administrative charges. Docketing fees for opening the case, court technology fees that fund electronic filing systems, and clerk processing charges are common. These attach to the case filing rather than the trial, so a plea deal doesn’t avoid them. Judges usually have little discretion to reduce them because the amounts are set by statute. Depending on the jurisdiction and the complexity of the case, these baseline costs commonly run a few hundred dollars.

Statutory Surcharges

Most jurisdictions add surcharges earmarked for specific programs. These are legislatively required, so the judge cannot waive them even when the defendant clearly cannot pay. Common examples include fees dedicated to victim advocacy services, DNA database maintenance, law library operations, and peace officer training. Any single surcharge may look modest, but a defendant facing multiple charges can see them stack quickly, because they attach to each count of conviction and must be paid in full to satisfy the judgment.

Restitution to Victims

Restitution is different in kind from every other charge in a criminal case. Court fees and surcharges go to the government. Restitution goes to the victim. In federal cases involving crimes of violence, property offenses, and certain fraud cases, restitution is mandatory: the court must order the defendant to compensate the victim, on top of any fine or penalty.{⁴}

Restitution covers concrete financial harm: the value of damaged or stolen property, medical and rehabilitation costs for bodily injuries, funeral expenses in cases involving death, and income the victim lost helping the investigation and prosecution. Property is valued at the greater of its value at the time of the crime or at sentencing.{⁴} Federal law also bars the court from imposing a fine that would impair your ability to pay restitution.{⁵}

Fees for a Court-Appointed Attorney

A court-appointed lawyer is not necessarily free. Forty-two states and the District of Columbia have laws allowing the government to charge defendants for the cost of their appointed counsel. Only a handful of states prohibit recoupment fees entirely. Many jurisdictions charge an upfront application fee just to determine eligibility, and if you’re convicted, the court can order repayment of all or part of the attorney’s fees through a recoupment order.

Recoupment orders are typically treated as civil judgments or built into probation conditions. The amount depends on the hours the appointed attorney spent, calculated at a rate well below private attorney fees but still substantial enough to reach several thousand dollars in complex cases. Courts are supposed to assess whether the defendant has any realistic future ability to pay, but the orders are often imposed broadly.

Costs That Continue During Probation and Supervised Release

Sentencing is not the end of the bill. Defendants on probation or supervised release face recurring charges for the length of supervision. Monthly supervision fees are common, and amounts vary by jurisdiction. Drug testing is another routine expense, typically billed per test. Court-ordered rehabilitation programs like substance abuse treatment or DUI education are paid directly to the program provider.

Electronic monitoring adds a separate stream. Defendants on house arrest or GPS monitoring generally pay a daily rental fee for the equipment, and that can run for months or years. Falling behind on any of these payments can be treated as a violation of your supervision conditions, which puts the underlying sentence back on the table.

How Unpaid Balances Grow

Federal criminal debt does not sit still. If your fine or restitution exceeds $2,500 and you don’t pay in full within 15 days of the judgment, interest begins accruing daily. The rate tracks the one-year Treasury yield for the week before you became liable.{²}

The penalties for falling further behind are steep. A delinquent balance triggers a penalty equal to 10% of the delinquent principal. A default adds another 15% on top. On a $10,000 balance in default, that’s $2,500 in penalties alone, plus accumulating interest.{²} Courts can waive or cap interest for genuine inability to pay, but you have to ask.

When the court gives up collecting directly, the debt often goes to a private collection agency. Several states allow those agencies to add a percentage-based collection fee, sometimes 30% to 50% of the outstanding balance. The surcharge is treated as part of the legal financial obligation and enforced the same way the original debt was. In some cases the collection fee alone rivals the original fine.

What Happens If You Don’t Pay

Criminal court debt is not an ordinary unpaid bill. The government’s collection tools go well beyond what a private creditor can do.

In federal cases, an unpaid fine or restitution order automatically becomes a lien against all your property and property rights, treated the same as a federal tax lien. The lien arises the moment the judgment is entered and lasts for 20 years. Wages have partial protection under the Consumer Credit Protection Act’s garnishment limits, but tax refunds, bank accounts, and real property are all reachable.{⁶}

At the state level, unpaid court debt has historically triggered driver’s license suspensions, which can trap people in a cycle where they can’t drive to work to earn the money to pay. Nearly 11 million people in the United States have faced license suspensions tied to unpaid fines and fees. At least 25 states and the District of Columbia have passed legislation since 2017 to curb or eliminate that practice, but it remains in force in many places.

The most serious consequence is reimprisonment. If a federal defendant knowingly fails to pay a delinquent fine or restitution, the court can resentence the defendant to any sentence that could have been imposed originally. Imprisonment for nonpayment is only permitted if the court finds the defendant willfully refused to pay or failed to make genuine efforts to acquire the resources.{⁷} A defendant cannot be locked up solely for being too poor to pay. The Supreme Court set out that principle in Bearden v. Georgia, holding that revoking probation for failure to pay without first deciding whether the failure was willful violates the Fourteenth Amendment. Before jail time enters the picture, the court must ask why you didn’t pay and, if the answer is genuine poverty, consider alternatives.{⁸}

Ability-to-Pay Protections You Have to Raise

Federal law requires the court to consider your financial situation when setting a fine. The judge must weigh your income, earning capacity, financial resources, and the burden a fine would place on your dependents, along with restitution already ordered.{⁵}

For filing fees, federal courts provide standardized forms for proceeding without prepaying fees or costs, commonly known as in forma pauperis status. The application asks you to disclose income, assets, debts, and dependents, and the court decides whether to grant the waiver.{⁹}

These protections are real, but not automatic. You have to raise the issue. Courts are not required to investigate your finances on their own. Mandatory assessments like the per-count special assessment under 18 U.S.C. § 3013 generally cannot be waived regardless of ability to pay, and mandatory restitution must be ordered even when full immediate payment is impossible. Many defendants leave the courthouse with a total obligation that bears little relationship to what they can actually afford.

Paying the Bill

Most courts accept card payments through an online portal, certified checks or money orders by mail, and cash in person during business hours. If you can’t pay everything at once, you can usually set up a payment plan by meeting with a clerk to establish a monthly amount. Some courts charge a small setup fee.

Stay in contact with the court. A defendant making consistent partial payments in good faith is in a very different position than one who goes silent. If you’re struggling, ask about a modified schedule or an interest waiver before the debt becomes delinquent, because the 10% delinquency penalty and the 15% default penalty are much harder to undo once imposed.{²} Once the account is with a private collection agency, the added surcharges can significantly inflate what you owe, and pulling the debt back under court supervision is difficult.

1
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 18 USC 3013 – Special Assessment on Convicted Persons
2
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 18 USC 3612 – Collection of Unpaid Fine or Restitution
3
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 28 USC 1918 – District Courts; Fines, Forfeitures and Criminal Proceedings
4
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 18 USC 3663A – Mandatory Restitution to Victims of Certain Crimes
5
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 18 USC 3572 – Imposition of a Sentence of Fine and Related Matters
6
GovInfo. 18 USC 3613 – Civil Remedies for Satisfaction of an Unpaid Fine
7
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 18 USC 3614 – Resentencing Upon Failure to Pay a Fine or Restitution
8
Legal Information Institute. Bearden v Georgia, 461 US 660
9
United States Courts. Fee Waiver Application Forms