An Alabama House committee approved legislation last week aiming at making victims of crime more likely to receive restitution.

HB 481, sponsored by Rep. Chris England, D-Tuscaloosa, requires any money collected from people convicted of a crime to be first allocated toward restitution for victim compensation, before payments are distributed to fines, fees and court costs.

“I filed it a few weeks ago,” England said in an interview last Wednesday. “I think the public would be shocked to find out that while the system is set up to do two things, punish people and compensate victims who are victims of crime, the last thing that gets paid after court costs and everything else are victims.”

The House Judiciary Committee approved the bill on a voice vote. It goes to the full House for consideration. There are ten days left in the 2026 regular session.

England said he wants to reorder the priority to make victims of crime the focus when the court orders them to be paid.

The court may order that victims be paid first, and the court clerks must reprogram the system to allow for that. But in most cases, the system by default makes court costs and related functions the priority, so that all the money paid by the individual because of the crime remains with the court and not to the victim.

“One of the most surprising findings to me was that the default priority system built into State Judicial Information System actually has victims as priority number 99, it is at the very bottom of the list after all buckets are filled,” said Leah Nelson, one of the authors of a report published last fall by [MDRC] on fines and fees in Alabama. “What that means in reality, our research shows, is that victims are highly unlikely to get paid, and they are very unlikely to get paid in a timely fashion….”

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