ACLU: When Being Poor Is a Crime

[marmar]

When Being Poor Is a Crime


Sean Matthews is a homeless construction worker who was convicted of marijuana possession in 2007, and was assessed $498 in legal fines and costs. He was arrested two years later after being unable to pay that $498, and spent five months in jail at a cost of more than $3,000 to the City of New Orleans.

Gregory White, also a homeless man, was arrested for stealing $39 worth of food from a local grocery store. He was assessed $339 in fines and fees. Because he could not pay the $339, the City of New Orleans imprisoned Mr. White for 198 days at a cost of over $3,500 to the city.

You can see where this is going. In a time when states are laying off school teachers and firefighters, cities and counties are locking up people who can't pay legal fees, at costs that exceed the actual amount owed.

The aggressive pursuit of defendants who do not pay legal fees seems like a good idea to cash-strapped states, but when that defendant is poor, it's taxpayers who end up paying.

What ends up happening, unsurprisingly, is these people's chances of successfully re-entering society plummets, increasing the likelihood that they'll end up back in prison. And a vicious cycle is born.

New reports by the ACLU and Brennan Center for Justice released today document this resurgence of debtors' prisons, despite the fact that the Supreme Court found, in the 1980 case Bearden v. Georgia, that imprisoning someone because they are poor violates the 14th Amendment.

These debtors' prisons waste city/county resources by attempting to extract payments from defendants who often are homeless, unemployed or simply too poor to pay.

A former chief judge in Orleans Parish Criminal District Court once wondered: “ow can you describe a system where the City pays $23 a day to the Sheriff to house someone in the Jail for 30 days to collect $100 as anything other than crazy?”

"Crazy" is possibly the only way to describe it.


http://www.aclu.org/blog/prisoners-rights/when-being-poor-crime

[leftstreet]

1. Yep. We should just call them what they are: Debtor's Prisons

K&R

[phasma ex machina]

4. +1 nt

[bananas]

5. k&r - Debtor's Prisons

[midnight]

2. K&R.... The system is broken.....

[ThomCat]

3. This is only going to get worse.

Republicans are making this seem like a mainstream idea. And as we have seen repeatedly, any idea that they fight to make mainstream, our own party eventually adopts and implements in some kind of "bipartisan compromise."

Their party make it acceptable, and then our party makes it happen.

:(

Gradually more and more laws are going to have higher and higher fees instead of jail time, because the goal is going to be "let's empty the jails." "We can't afford prisons, but we need money, so let's assess fines instead of sentencing people to prison time." But then when people can't afford the fines, they'll end up in prison anyway.

The prison corporations will lobby hard to make sure they don't lose any business. They want to keep their beds occupied. And incarcerating debtors will do that. So they'll be happy. They don't care why poor people are in prison, just so long as you're there.

So in the end, town and cities and states will end up getting their fines from anyone who can afford to pay them, and prisons will still be full because of all the poor people who can't afford to pay.

I predict that debtor prisons will make a big comeback, and prison labor will become a huge money maker for the prison industry, and for the corporations that are able to hire those prisoners for pennies on the dollar. :(

[maryf]

6. institutionalized slave labor...

the alternative to the military?

[lonestarnot]

8. Governor of AZ is tied very closely to that industry. She runs from cameras every time she is asked

about her private prison connection, one of her staff.

[xchrom]

7. What were some of the reasons people were coming here

In leaky boats at the start of our country?

Gimme time - it'll come to me.