Marion County Community Corrections billed participants more than $3.4 million in user fees in 2025 but collected only about $524,000, prompting the agency's executive director to ask the city for $1.5 million in the 2027 budget to cover the charges outright. The fees, which participants pay for ankle monitors and drug testing while under supervision, have proven nearly impossible to collect — and agency leadership says pursuing them wastes resources while keeping people from rebuilding their lives. According to Mirror Indy's report, most of the money collected came from seized tax returns, and just 3% was paid directly by participants.
The charges typically fall on people convicted of low-level offenses, many of them nonviolent and tied to substance use or mental health struggles. One participant on house arrest accumulates $8 in daily debt for his ankle monitor alone, a bill that now totals thousands of dollars he hasn't paid and can't afford without cutting food or transportation. Scott Hohl, who runs the agency, told city-county councilors at an August 19 budget hearing that his staff spends time and money chasing fees that generate almost no revenue. He didn't include the funding request in his initial proposal because he'd been told to hold spending steady, but he's hoping the budget can be amended before the City-County Council votes on October 19.
Hohl said his agency won't send people back to jail for failing to pay fees alone, calling it a poor use of jail space. Most participants in the program were convicted of low-level felonies, not violent crimes, and completion rates have risen even as fee collection has fallen, making it difficult to show that payment reduces repeat offenses. Still, the debt lingers long after sentences end, appearing on credit reports and subject to collection through tax refunds. Not everyone supports using public money to erase the charges — one Republican councilor said his constituents want sidewalks and street lights, not subsidies for people convicted of felonies.
Advocates say the fees are part of a larger web of costs that trap people trying to leave the justice system behind, from phone calls and commissary purchases during incarceration to license reinstatement fees after release. One organizer who served seven years in state prison estimated his family spent as much as $50,000 while he was locked up, then faced a surprise $250 charge to get his driver's license back when he got out. In June, the Validus Movement secured commitments from the city to waive drug test fees and reimburse ankle monitoring costs, and Hohl told Mirror Indy he's pursuing those changes with the requested funding. The City-County Council's Public Safety and Criminal Justice Committee advanced its portion of the budget on September 30 without the $1.5 million included, though the deputy controller said his office had received the request and hadn't yet fully reviewed it.