Sticking it to the poor - Predatory "laws"

[packman]

Sonya Ayers was convicted of a misdemeanor and ultimately jailed for more than a day after she was unable to pay her city utility bill.


A city ordinance that criminalized the failure to pay a water bill was repealed by the city council in the town of Chickasaw, Alabama, last night in response to a Southern Poverty Law Center letter advising the city’s municipal judge that the ordinance is unconstitutional.

Can't pay your water bill - well, it's not enough that your water is turned off. If you lived in Chickasaw, Alabama you would also be jailed, fined and THEN have to pay for monthly supervision fees to Judicial Correction Services, a private, for-profit probation company.

Thankfully the Southern Poverty Law Center stepped in -

Seems it is not limited to this one case:


Predatory fines and fees that unjustly target the poor are common in cities across the country. In Pagedale, Missouri, for instance, residents can be criminally prosecuted for having mismatched curtains or a hole in a window screen. And while debtors’ prison practices were outlawed nearly 200 years ago, a Baldwin County, Alabama, man helped by the SPLC spent two weeks in jail after failing to pay an $88 trash bill."


https://www.splcenter.org/news/2016/09/14/gulf-coast-town-repeals-ordinance-criminalizing-poor-after-splc-action