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Researchers preview $300M outstanding LFO debt and commission seeks an updated calculator
Summary
Researchers told the commission Washington courts assessed about $530 million in legal-financial obligations (LFOs) from 2018–2021; by July 2023 defendants had nearly $300 million outstanding. Staff also explained the LFO calculator was taken offline so it can be rebuilt to reflect legislative reforms.
Researchers from the Washington State Center for Court Research previewed a legislative report on legal financial obligations (LFOs) and commission staff described work to modernize a widely used LFO calculator.
Dr. Lindsey Beach and Carl Jones summarized the report’s early findings: between 2018 and 2021 Washington courts assessed about $530 million in LFOs; defendants made roughly $144 million in payments and courts reduced about $98 million through administrative adjustments; by July 2023 nearly $300 million in LFO debt remained outstanding. “By July 2023, defendants carried nearly $300,000,000 in LFO debt on these cases,” Beach said.
The researchers emphasized that legislative reforms and COVID-era caseload declines both help explain sharp drops in imposed amounts and outstanding debt over the study period. They cautioned that decreased caseloads — which fell 40–50% across court levels during the study — reduce opportunities both to impose and to collect LFOs, complicating attribution of declines solely to policy changes.
The report identifies demographic and neighborhood disparities: cases with Native defendants had particularly high rates of outstanding debt (62% in the period described) and people living in the most socioeconomically disadvantaged neighborhoods have higher rates of court involvement and higher proportions of outstanding LFO debt. The authors said court adjustments (administrative reductions) did more to shrink debt for residents of less disadvantaged neighborhoods than for people from the most disadvantaged neighborhoods.
Commission staff also reported the LFO calculator — a tool judges have relied on since about 2018 to estimate discretionary LFO amounts — has been taken offline for maintenance because the code is hard-coded and does not reflect subsequent legal reforms. Staff said they are working with AOC web developers to move the tool to a sustainable platform and hope to deploy a development version within months and a fully updated, stress-tested tool thereafter.
The report will be finalized and published once AOC network outages are resolved, the researchers said; staff asked the commission to expect the final document and data dissemination in the days after network restoration.
