Submitted by Elaine Magliaro, Guest Blogger
In October of 2010, the American Civil Liberties Union published a report titled In for a Penny: The Rise of America’s New Debtors’ Prisons. The ACLU had found that debtors’ prisons were “flourishing” in this country, “more than two decades after the Supreme Court prohibited imprisoning those who are too poor to pay their legal debts.” In 2011, Huffington Post reported that debtors’ prisons were legal in more than one-third of the states in this country.
According to the ACLU report, some state and local governments “have turned aggressively to using the threat and reality of imprisonment to squeeze revenue out of the poorest defendants who appear in their courts. These modern-day debtors’ prisons impose devastating human costs, waste taxpayer money and resources, undermine our criminal justice system, are racially skewed, and create a two-tiered system of justice.”
Marie Diamond—writing for ThinkProgress in December 2011:
Federal imprisonment for unpaid debt has been illegal in the U.S. since 1833. It’s a practice people associate more with the age of Dickens than modern-day America. But as more Americans struggle to pay their bills in the wake of the recession, collection agencies are using harsher methods to get their money, ushering in the return of debtor’s prisons.
Two years ago, the Wall Street Journal reported—after interviewing twenty judges across the country—that the number of borrowers who were threatened with arrest in their courtrooms had “surged since the financial crisis began.” The Wall Street Journal added that some borrowers who were jailed had “no idea before being locked up that they were sued to collect an outstanding debt” because of “sloppy, incomplete or even false documentation.” Diamond said it was becoming more and more common for debtors to serve time in jail. She added that some debtors are even required to pay for their time spent in jail—which, she said, exacerbates their dire financial situations.
Back in 2011, NPR told the story of what happened to an Illinois woman named Robin Sanders:
She [Robin Sanders] was driving home when an officer pulled her over for having a loud muffler. But instead of sending her off with a warning, the officer arrested Sanders, and she was taken right to jail.
“That’s when I found out [that] I had a warrant for failure to appear in Macoupin County. And I didn’t know what it was about.”
Sanders owed $730 on a medical bill. She says she didn’t even know a collection agency had filed a lawsuit against her.
“They say they send out these court notices, and nobody gets them,” Sanders says.
She spent four days in jail waiting for her father to raise $500 for her bail. That money was then turned over to the collection agency.
Just this month, the ACLU of Ohio published a report titled The Outskirts of Hope: How Ohio’s Debtors’ Prisons Are Ruining Lives and Costing Communities. The ACLU found that many municipalities in Ohio “routinely imprison those who are unable to pay fines and court costs despite a 1983 United States Supreme Court decision declaring this practice to be a violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the Constitution.” The ACLU said that affluent residents of Ohio who are sentenced to pay fines after being convicted of a criminal or traffic offense can simply pay the fines and go on with their lives. The same does not hold true for “Ohio’s poor and working poor” who may not have the monetary resources to pay their fines. Such people may find themselves at the “beginning of a protracted process that may involve contempt charges, mounting fees, arrest warrants, and even jail time. The stark reality is that, in 2013, Ohioans are being repeatedly jailed simply for being too poor to pay fines.”
Some Findings from The Outskirts of Hope:
Debtors’ Prisons In Ohio
• Despite clear constitutional and legislative prohibitions, debtors’ prison practices are alive and well throughout Ohio. An investigation by the ACLU of Ohio uncovered conclusive evidence of these practices in 7 of the 11 Ohio counties examined.
• Courts in Huron, Cuyahoga, and Erie counties are among the worst offenders. In the second half of 2012, over 20% of all bookings in the Huron County Jail were related to failure to pay fines. In Cuyahoga County, the Parma Municipal Court jailed at least 45 people for failure to pay fines and costs between July 15 and August 31, 2012. During the same period in Erie County, the Sandusky Municipal Court jailed at least 75 people for similar charges.
• Based on the ACLU of Ohio’s investigation, there is no evidence that any of these people were given hearings to determine whether or not they were financially able to pay their fines, as required by the law.
The ACLU of Ohio reported that the U.S. Constitution, the Ohio Constitution, and Ohio Revised Code all prohibit debtors’ prisons. It said that the courts are required by law to determine whether an individual is too poor to pay a fine before jailing the person. It added that “debtors’ prisons actually waste taxpayer dollars by arresting and incarcerating people who will simply never be able to pay their fines, which are in any event usually smaller than the amount it costs to arrest and jail them.”
According to CBS News, “high rates of unemployment and government fiscal shortfalls that followed the housing crash have increased the use of debtors’ prisons, as states look for ways to replenish their coffers.” Inimai Chettiar, director of the justice program at New York University School of Law’s Brennan Center for Justice, said, “It’s like drawing blood from a stone. States are trying to increase their revenue on the backs of the poor.” He added, “It’s a growing problem nationally, particularly because of the economic crisis.”
Does it make sense to jail poor people for failure to pay their fines when jailing them only drives them deeper into debt and also “costs counties more than the actual debt because of the cost of arresting and incarcerating individuals?”
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“Unfortunately, many Americans live on the outskirts of hope — some because of their poverty, and some because of their color, and all too many because of both. Our task is to help replace their despair with opportunity.”
– President Lyndon B. Johnson (State of the Union, 1964)
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SOURCES
The Outskirts of Hope: How Ohio’s Debtors’ Prisons Are Ruining Lives and Costing Communities (ACLU)
IN FOR A PENNY: The Rise of America’s New Debtors’ Prisons (ACLU)
Report: Ohio Is Illegally Throwing Poor People In Jail For Owing Money (Think Progress)
The Return Of Debtor’s Prisons: Thousands Of Americans Jailed For Not Paying Their Bills (Think Progress)
Debtors’ Prison Legal In More Than One-Third Of U.S. States (Huffington Post)
Debtor Arrests Criticized (Wall Street Journal)
Welcome to Debtors’ Prison, 2011 Edition (Wall Street Journal)
Modern-day debtors’ prison alleged in Ohio (NBC/AP)
Unpaid Bills Land Some Debtors Behind Bars (NPR)
Modern-day debtors’ prison alleged in Ohio (NBC News)
Get Out of Jail—But Not Free: Courts Scramble to Fill Their Coffers by Billing Ex-Cons
By John Gibeaut
ABA Journal
Posted Jul 1, 2012
http://www.abajournal.com/magazine/article/get_out_of_jailbut_not_free_courts_scramble_to_fill_their_coffers_by_billin/
Excerpt:
In Monopoly, a roll of the dice can get you a chance to draw a “get out of jail free” card to keep your piece moving around the board. But in the game of life, it takes real money to get out and stay out of real jails.
The lesson is not lost on Ameen Muqtadir. When he walked out of a Pennsylvania prison in 2002 after serving a stretch for robbery, he says, he was determined to put down the heroin and cocaine that he blames for keeping him behind bars on and off since his teens.
“I was able to walk away from the system entirely,” recalls Muqtadir, 54. Or so he thought.
Years after he returned to his hometown of Philadelphia, Muqtadir found the system hadn’t let him go. He learned the Philadelphia courts had him on the hook for nearly $41,000 in forfeited bail and costs for failure to appear in 1991 and again in 1997 in two earlier robbery cases.
The problem: Muqtadir couldn’t come to court because he was locked up in prison, and the underlying charges in the other cases had been dismissed in the meantime.
“There was never any notice,” says Muqtadir, who today works as program director for Art House, a re-entry service for ex-offenders. “No letters for money. Nothing ever happened.”
Muqtadir learned about the forfeitures when he was caught up in a sweep launched last year to collect up to $1.5 billion in unpaid criminal fines and costs, including $1 billion in bail the courts say is forfeited. The sweep covers an estimated 320,000 people—nearly a quarter of the city’s population. Some delinquent accounts date to the 1970s.
Since the 1990s, state and local governments across the nation increasingly have turned to fees imposed on criminal defendants to keep their justice systems afloat in economically tough times. Besides fines, deemed punishment, and restitution, which repays victims, states have imposed thousands of other revenue-raising schemes on offenders. Many have faint ties to crime and punishment or individual offenses, such as an attempt by a Massachusetts sheriff to increase charges for county jail inmates’ haircuts above the $1.50 limit set by state prisons.
Usually, though, much of the money is uncollectible. Ex-offenders typically move often, making it difficult if not impossible to serve them with delinquency notices or arrest warrants. Others, such as Muqtadir, hide in plain sight: in prison. But advocates say most are just too poor to pay.
Threats of more jail time for nonpayment also constantly loom. Some critics worry heavy-handed tactics used to collect from ex-offenders signal a return, in effect, to debtors’ prisons, which were abolished in the United States in the 1830s.
ok now let’s see. the corporation formerly known as the government has plenty of money to buy specialized military weapons. drones, stealth planes etc, they have money to order jacketed bullets, they have money to train youths for dhs, they have 4 billion dollars a year to send to israel without fail , they have money to bail out the big banks and swindle (wall) st , and even though the middle class and working poor are doing worse economically apparently the billionaires are continously making billions, they have money to give the mta 193 million dollars for trains and buses that werent working before the man made sandy storm, they also apparently have money to build more and more prisons, they have money to build fema trains along with the fema re-education camps, and yet the working poor and middle class are being thrown in jail because of debts caused them deliberately by the bullcrapping ultra elites? and ;let’s not leave out the fact that the prisons are now privately owned so the more people they get to fill them the more corrupt data they can give out to secure more federal funding. does that sound about right? Miss Elaine Thank You for giving me a subject to research thoroughly while trying to wake the rest of humanity up
raf,
Received an answer to my query from Brown. It was a form letter about the deficit. Very disappointing.
Elaine,
Like I said yesterday…. It’s crazy… But a probation agent has to clean its case load somehow… It is crazy…. I agree with Judge O’Conner….
Ohio Judge says the use debtors’ prisons “must receive further attention.”
http://www.thomhartmann.com/forum/2013/04/ohio-judge-says-use-debtors-prisons-must-receive-further-attention
Our nation outlawed the use of debtors’ prisons in 1833. However, people in Ohio are ending up in jail for their inability to pay fines. According to an investigation by the Ohio ACLU, people are being locked up for because they can’t pay court costs and fees. The report said, “The use of debtors’ prison is an outdated and destructive practice that has wreaked havoc upon the lives of those profiled.”
However, at least one Ohio Supreme Court judge agrees with the ACLU. Chief Justice Maureen O’Connor responded to the ACLU’s request for the court to intervene, and said, “you do cite a matter that can and must receive further attention.”
Jailing people for their inability to pay a fine is illogical and inhumane. A person can’t go out and earn the necessary funds when they’re locked up in jail, and Ohio is simply punishing someone for being poor. Thankfully the ACLU is working to stop the rebirth of debtors’ prisons.
Ohio jails debtors
rafflaw,
I couldn’t say.
Elaine,
Is that the first Spanish language blog trackback?? 🙂
Modern-Day Debtors’ Prisons: Jack’s Story (ACLU of Ohio)
Sounds like an extension of mortgage abuse – foreclosing on people w/o a mortgage.