An article in today's San Francisco Chronicle addresses San Francisco's inability to collect fines, victim's restitution and court-imposed fees from convicted criminals. The article can be found here.

In his article, Jaxon Van Derbeken points out that only recently has California forced San Francisco to attempt to collect the fees that convicts owe. California recently forced San Francisco courts to act, because the Probation Department (which had its hands full monitoring 7,500 felony and misdemeanor offenders) had failed to establish a system of collecting the $9.6 million in unpaid victim's restitution fees and fines from criminals who had been ordered by courts to pay.

The article notes that "court culture" largely determines the importance placed on collecting victims' restitution. In the counties where judges place value in not forcing victims to pay more for the crimes committed against them (by shouldering the burden of hospital expenses, lost salaries, and other crime related costs), there has not been a problem implementing a system that retrieves court ordered fees. However, in San Francisco, where those who do not pay their fines are offered an opportunity to work off the fee through community service, and then never monitored to see if those criminals have completed their court ordered community service, have amassed $3.3 million in victim's expenses, and collected "just $2,278 in court-ordered restitution and $111,635 in restitution-related fines."

Here's hoping San Francisco's system starts placing higher priority on the restitution rights of the victims.