If a defendant is convicted of the offense of failure to appear, the court is required to assess the $5 arrest fee.

• A. False (the offense is initiated by complaint, not a citation).
• B. True.
• C. The fee is never assessed for any offense.
• D. The fee is $5 only if there is a citation.

Answer: (A)

The thing this question tests is how an offense is brought into court and how that affects whether certain fees apply. When a case is started by a complaint, it means a formal charging document was filed with the court—usually after an arrest or when the prosecutor moves forward with the case. A citation, by contrast, is a notice to appear for a non-arrest offense and doesn’t initiate the case in the same way.

Since this failure-to-appear offense is initiated by a complaint, the procedural trigger that would require the $5 arrest fee isn’t present. Fees tied to an arrest are not automatically imposed just because a case exists; they depend on how the case was initiated and whether an actual arrest/booking took place in connection with the charge. Therefore, the court is not required to assess that arrest fee in this scenario.