Director of New Mexico's Fines and Fees Justice Center, Monica Ault, detailed in an editorial for the Santa Fe New Mexican the various ways court fees are targeting residents already living in poverty.

”Bernalillo County fares much worse, spending a whopping $1.17 to collect a dollar,” Ault wrote in the editorial. ”Why are we using our limited public safety resources to chase uncollectable debts?”

New Mexico is one of 12 states that still treat minor traffic violations as a criminal offense, The Santa Fe New Mexican reports. The U.S. Supreme Court has multiple times stated that the government cannot arrest or incarcerate a person for being unable to pay monetary sanctions, Ault notes in her piece.

Some states, such as Nevada, have effected change, Nevada stopped issuing bench warrants for individuals who failed to attend traffic hearings, pay traffic tickets or renew their driver’s licenses — procedures still practiced in New Mexico.

A recent poll indicates that 89% of New Mexican voters support decriminalization efforts for minor traffic violations, according to Ault, who stresses that ending bench warrants for outstanding court debts would be both fiscally and politically smart, and would be the right thing to do.

 "New Mexico counties spend at least 41 cents just to collect a single dollar of fine and fee revenue — that’s 115 times more than the IRS spends to collect a dollar of income tax,”  Ault wrote.