Lawsuit: Poverty keeps woman jailed (GA)

[RamboLiberal]

http://www.ajc.com/news/content/metro/stories/2006/09/18/0919metprison.html

All Ora Lee Hurley has to do to get out of prison is pay a $705 fine, according to her attorney.

But every month, she pays the Georgia Department of Corrections $600 for room and board and spends $76 a month for a MARTA card, laundry and some meals. As a result, Hurley has stayed locked up more than eight months past her original 120-day sentence, according to a lawsuit filed Monday by the Southern Center for Human Rights seeking her release.

"This is another debtor's prison case," said Sarah Geraghty, a Southern Center lawyer. "This is a situation where if this woman was able to write a check for the amount of the fine, she would be out of there. And because she can't, she's still in custody. It's as simple as that."

Hurley is an inmate held at the Gateway Diversion Center in Atlanta. She leaves the center for work five days a week at the K&K Soul Food restaurant on Donald L. Hollowell Parkway, earning $6.50 an hour. After taxes, she nets about $700 a month. Room and board at the diversion center is $600 a month. She also pays $52 for a MARTA card, $4 for laundry and $20 for meals every month. She has earned more than $7,000 while at the diversion center, according to the lawsuit.

"Despite diligently working at a restaurant for nearly a year, turning her check over to the (Georgia Department of Corrections) and fulfilling all of the other requirements imposed by the diversion center, Ms. Hurley is still in custody," the lawsuit, filed in Fulton County Superior Court, reads.

[ThomCat]

1. That should be damned illegal.

The judge should let her out immediately with a payment plan, and she should be pursuing a lawsuit for unlawful imprisonment. :grr:

[liberalhistorian]

4. Very true, and it's beyond shameful. But

as a paralegal for the past eleven years, I can tell you for certain that this kind of case is NOT in any way an isolated one. It's just that you don't hear about it all that much. People who are guilty as sin write a check and leave the court/jail with a smile and go about their merry way, while people without money, even (and maybe especially) innocent people are stuck in the system. It all gets down to one word, MONEY. That's ALL it's about in the "justice" system. Them that have gets, and them that don't-fuck you and rot in jail for all society cares. Some of the situations I've personally seen and been involved with, especially the people stuck in them, still break my heart and make me sick to think of.

It's one of the many reasons why I'm really burned out on paralegal work and why I don't really think I want to go to law school like my family and friends have been bugging me to do. I'd have to take out horrendous loans, and then would have to work at some goddamned effing corporate legal entity, screwing people over, for years just to make the money to pay back the loans. Then, by the time I'd get out from under, I'd likely be in my sixties or even seventies (I'm already almost 42) and it'd be too damn late to do anything else, like work in legal aid or public interest law.

[greccogirl]

8. It's t he reason why

I never used my paralegal training.

[mike_c]

2. all well and good, but where will she go when she's released...?

I don't mean to suggest that she shouldn't be, of course. And maybe she will be better off once she's released. But I'd be willing to bet that her life will not improve significantly on the street. That's a real crime. This is one of the richest countries in the world, and yet we allow our citizens live like this. This is shameful, above and beyond the incarceration that was the real reason for the story.

[sweetheart]

3. Is a poor house to be a lockhouse?

Is that the new victorian? A poor house can refit its double glazing bars and look like an open prison,
so a sick society can pay systemically for wars abroad and torture of their own children, poor and vulnerable.

My, look how far the victorians have come, I'm suprised there's not a huge queen victoia statue being erected
on the white house lawn as i write this, there in here imperium, spaketh shall houseth the poor as criminals
that they dyeth soon and give their social security rewards to us.

[liberalhistorian]

5. "What? Are there no workhouses? Are there no

jails? Seems to me that those good enough for the likes of them!"

Ebenezer Scrooge, 1843; American society, 2006. :mad: :mad: :mad: :puke: :puke: :puke:

[The Deacon]

6. Silly Me

I thought when the Founding Fathers outlawed Debtor's Prisons that would be the end of it - leave it to the Sick Society of George Bush to bring back a system repudiated by such bastions of liberalism as Saudi Arabia, Taiwan & Indonesia.

[liberalhistorian]

7. To be fair, this kind of thing has been going on

long before Bush, it's just never gotten much attention. Such is the wonder of our "justice" system. It's ALWAYS been just about MONEY. Anyone who thinks otherwise hasn't ever worked in the "justice" system.

[no_hypocrisy]

9. You don't know the half of it.

About three years, the state assigned me a defendant for a hearing. I had to meet with him in the county jail prior to that and discovered that his family had passed the hat to pay his bail bond and yet he was still imprisoned. At the hearing, I requested my client be released on parole and that was granted.

That should have been the end of it. But the bail bondsman came after after the cousin of my client to pay the rest of the bond, something like $5,000 in a week, which she didn't have. So he sued her. By this time, I continued my representation and discovered on "the street" that the bondsman was illegal, i.e., he wasn't registered with the state, and he couldn't get my client out of jail anyway. And here he was, suing for the rest of the money.

I tried to reason with him but he kept yelling and swearing at me on the phone. Mistake. So we went to court, I made him an insulting offer which I knew he wouldn't take: $25 every two weeks until it was paid. He was still full of himself and promised he'd win in court. I agreed with him, except for the fact that I was prepared to put my hand on the proverbial Bible and tell the court that his contract was as illegal as he was and to have him arrested on the spot if I could. More swearing.

But he left the building, the case was dismissed, and (I swear this is true), his storefront business was closed about a week later. Parasites who prey on the poor deserve that -- and worse, IMO.

[NorthernSpy]

10. just another swell day in the gulag

:eyes:

This woman pays $600 per month for the privilege of being locked up for owing $705. So she can't really ever manage to scrape together the $705, because her job pays so little.

And yet this arrangement costs the state about $650 per month on top of that $600. So the state is losing $650 every month even after collecting $600 of the $1,250 in monthly imprisonment costs.

Georgia: we're not just bad at human rights; we're bad at math, too!