A particularly egregious finding of the Ferguson report was the degree to which the city had come to use court fees as a source of municipal revenue. The city relied on its poorest residents for traffic fines, court fees, and arrests because all of these were income-generating activities for the city. In effect, the city was financed through selective and targeted enforcement of various laws that did little to make people safer, but which imposed a severe burden on those least able to bear it (see US DOJ 2015).
