‘Incarceration if you’re poor, payment if you’re rich’: Reports warn of debtors’ prisons

[xchrom]

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/05/21/incarceration-if-youre-poor-payment-if-youre-rich-reports-warn-of-debtors-prisons/



An NPR investigation into how judges assess fees and fines to defendants has revealed that many who enter the courtroom essentially end up in “debtor’s prisons.”

Strictly speaking, the Supreme Court outlawed debtor’s prisons with the 1983 Bearden v. Georgia decision, which held that a judge can only impose a jail sentence for failure to pay if he or she believes the defendant is able, but unwilling to pay.

“To do otherwise would deprive the probationer of his conditional freedom simply because, through no fault of his own, he cannot pay,” the Court decided. “Such a deprivation would be contrary to the fundamental fairness required by the Fourteenth Amendment.”

According to the NPR investigation, judges are increasingly unable to determine whether defendants are unable or merely unwilling to pay their fees and fines. NPR reports that some judges demand defendants relinquish their cell phone service or quit smoking in order to pay their debt.

[jberryhill]

1. Of course...

The courts are horribly underfunded, but the prisons aren't. I wonder why that is...

[Lee-Lee]

2. It's a tough line, but what's the alternative

We have to have laws in this country.

Those of us who recognize that government can be a good and positive force in this country know we need a lot more laws than those who claim government is evil.

Laws have to have the teeth of enforcement behind them, or they are worthless. That means cops on the streets (or in more technical areas like tax law unarmed investigators, but always with eventually some armed force able to use force backing them up should a person not comply) and courts with legal authority to judge guilt or innocence and punish. You can't advocate for an law at all, any kind, without it somewhere having law enforcement and courts making it possible. Even something like unemployment insurance requires laws and courts- tax laws enforced by unarmed or armed agents, with violators punished by courts, is how a law like that is funded.

If you don't punish violators, your don't have people following the laws- or you end up in a two tiered system where the people who have a conscience and follow the law and the rest don't and never get punished so they have an advantage- AKA Wall Street.

But anyway, punishment of the guilty is necessary. Be it a fine, community service, or jail time. And if a person is unable to pay a fine and community service isn't a good option (for example, if they had a prior sentence of community's revive and never completed it or had issues showing up, etc) what other recourse is there?

[Skidmore]

5. Laws need to be fair and not picayune.

So many areas have nitpicky laws on the books to meet the sensibilities of the upper income levels of the area and not what is workable for people across the economic spectrum. Hence we end up with laws that won't let people have garden plots and the like.

[Lee-Lee]

6. Agreed there- but regardless we have to have enforcement mechanisms for laws

Be they the laws we agree with, or ones we don't.

And the more laws we want, the bigger and stronger those enforcement mechanisms need to be in order to be effective. Weak enforcement of laws gets you Wall Street, where nobody goes to jail for sendings. Country into recession breaking laws.

[Supersedeas]

9. Criminal fines based on the ability to actually pay them

[Lee-Lee]

10. I don't think that would fly, punishments should be the same based on offense

Not based on ability to pay.

[booley]

13. finland bases it's fines on ability to pay

if you are rich you can easily do a fine that would cripple a poor person.

[Skidmore]

3. It would be cheaper for "entrepreneuer" class and erstwhile self-anointed "makers"

who think they are the only contributors to society to hire people and pay decent wages than to warehouse people in this manner. I listened to part of that series. One guy ended up in serious debt and with jail time for catching a fish without a license to have some food. So much for that teaching a person how to fish myth.

[xchrom]

4. +1

[liberal N proud]

7. One would think.

[knightmaar]

8. Congratulations

So many apostrophes and every one of them is used correctly. This is not the Internet I know.

[sendero]

11. I heard some of that series...

.... and it is truly disheartening.

The justifications for throwing folks in jail did not resonate with me. One wonders if there is a financial interest in jailing these folks, it sure doesn't work out financially for the city/state/county.

I would propose a simple solution. Can't pay the fine (usually because you are unemployed)? Substitute a REASONABLE amount of community service instead. Refuse to do the service, then jail.

[woo me with science]

12. kick and rec