Waiving Community Service Fees

May community service fees be waived? I suspect some of you are thinking “I hope so, because they just were,” or something along those lines. It turns out to be a tricky question, I think. First, let me be clear about what I mean by community service. I’m talking about community service ordered as a condition of probation, either as a special condition of probation under G.S. 15A-1343(b1)(6) or a community and intermediate condition of probation under G.S. 15A-1343(a1)(2). Those two conditions are essentially the same, and both require the probationer to perform community service and pay the fee required by law for it. (When the community and intermediate community service condition was initially added to the law in 2011, it did not include any reference to the fee, but an amendment in 2012—discussed here—added one.) Community service ordered as a condition of probation, supervised or unsupervised, generally falls under the Community Service program described in G.S. 143B-708. (There is a background question about whether a judge may order community service outside the program, but let’s leave that aside for now.) Community service through the program requires the defendant to pay a fee of $250. Under G.S. 143B-708(c), that fee “shall be paid by all persons who participate in the program or receive services from the program staff.” Only one fee is required for each “sentencing transaction,” defined as all offenses considered and adjudicated during the same term of court. In general, a person must pay the fee in full before [...]