Jail time in leu of fine?

Yes you can do jail time to pay for your fine. Additionally, there may be a warrant for your arrest for failure to pay the fine. What you need to do is go to court in the morning have your case put on calendar and request jail time to pay for the outstanding balance of the fine. Robert Driessen

Typically, California courts allow a person to convert their fines into jail time at a specified dollar amount per day of jail served. The dollar amount may vary from county to county. However, judges typically allow for jail in lieu of a fine either at the time of the plea or upon returning to court to make the request. If your matter has already gone to collections, the fine may become a civil assessment. If you are still on probation, you should be careful to make sure that you are not violating your probation for having failed to pay your fine. If you are on probation, you may want to return to court, set your case on the court's calendar, and ask the judge to convert the fine to jail time or community service. WARNING: failure to pay a fine is often considered a probation violation for which you can be sanctioned (ie jail, community service, etc...). If you do have a probation violation, judge could take you into custody at the time that you appear in court. As a practical matter, many judges (but not all) will be more understanding and lenient for those who walk in voluntarily to resolve their outstanding fines.....as opposed to "getting caught" later. I hope this helps.

You can do jail time, or often times you can do community service or community labor. The best thing to do is try to take care of it asap, since you might have a warrant and might be in violation of your probation terms. First thing to do is call the courthouse and see if you can get a court date or if you just need to show up the next day, they will tell you what to do. Remember that if you have a warrant, the judge would have the power to take you to jail right then and there, so make preparations just in case. Also, it sounds like you would be eligible for a public defender, who can review your file and advise you if you could do community labor instead of go to jail. In any event, you're smart for wanting to take care of this before it turns into something bigger. Good luck!