Court-ordered payments, also known
as assessments, generally fall into one of three categories:
costs/fees, fines, or restitution.
● Costs/Fees are legally mandated
assessments that are enforced on a state or county basis.
These include fees for emergency medical services, offender
supervision programs, victim witness services, and other
public programs and expenditures.
● Fines represent monies that
a court is statutorily permitted to assess to a defendant
based on the conviction of specific offenses.
● Restitution represents any
court-ordered compensation to a crime victim that is paid
by the responsible defendants(s). Restitution is not ordered
on every case, but it can represent a significant percentage
of the assessed monies on any particular case.
Two additional factors affect the
court-ordered payment totals appearing on the dashboards.
First, if a court-ordered assessment is ever cancelled
for any reason (i.e. clerical error), an offsetting amount
is subtracted from the overall total to balance the original
charge. Second, monies associated to bail and escrow are
not considered assessments and are excluded from dashboard
totals.
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