Administrative costs of imprisonment due to non-payment of regulatory offense fines

Commissioned by the Hungarian Helsinki Committee, we calculated the regulatory-side administrative burden related to punishing minor offenses. We built on the standard cost model (SCM) that is originally used to estimate the administrative burden of businesses. We modified the SCM to be applicable to estimating the costs of procedures related to offenses. Together with our client we identified three types of offense for which we calculated the costs: we calculated the budgetary consequences of the practice of discriminatory and excessive sanctioning of three socially disadvantaged groups: Roma people, homeless people and sex workers.

In earlier projects we made for the Helsinki Committee we calculated the costs of incarceration (in 2014) and the costs of implementing the UN’s Protocol to the Convention against Torture (in 2012).