The U.S. Is Locking People Up For Being Poor

Main Entry ImageHuffington Post – by Saki Knafo

Virginia Dickerson says she’s devoted the last three years to recovering from the drug problems that entangled her in the criminal justice system throughout her teens and 20s.

Now in her mid-30s, she’s been out of prison for more than a year, working 30 hours a week as a cook and server at a restaurant in Richland, Wash. She says she’s also looking for a full-time job, and volunteering for two organizations that help people overcome addictions and a third that provides arts programs to teens.  

Still, if she fails to pay off the $8,000 in fines that she still owes county courts in southern Washington as a result of her arrests several years ago, she could end up right back in jail. District and Superior courts in Benton County ordered her to pay a total of $130 a month toward fines and fees stemming from two drug arrests in 2010 and 2011, one for possession of methamphetamines and the other for delivery. Dickerson was fined about $6,000 for her two drug charges, but has accrued about $2,000 in interest.

“I’ve done my time, and I’m doing anything in my power to clean up the wreckage of my past,” Dickerson said. “But I can’t pay the amount they want me to pay.”

In recent years, local governments throughout the United States have locked up growing numbers of people for failing to pay their legal debts. The American Civil Liberties Union and the Brennan Center for Justice released a pair of wide-ranging reports on the practice in 2010. Now, a new report takes a closer look at the emergence of modern-day “debtors’ prisons” in Washington state, specifically.

People throughout the state are often sent to jail because they can’t afford to pay the heavy fines and legal fees issued by county courts, says the report, released Monday by the ACLU of Washington and Columbia Legal Services.

In Benton County, the problem is particularly severe; about 20 percent of the jail population is there because of unpaid legal charges. The county’s District Court fines people for misdemeanors like driving without a license, and the Superior Court orders defendants who are convicted of violent crimes and property offenses to pay restitution to their victims. In both courts, defendants are often ordered to pay for the cost of their trials.

Throughout the state, defendants frequently must pay fines, fees and other charges exceeding several thousand dollars per conviction, accruing interest at the rate of 12 percent per year. Those who don’t have the money ultimately face what the report describes as a “demoralizing cycle of court hearings, contempt charges, and arrest warrants.” This system “punishes people simply for being poor and brings little to no benefit to the government or the general public,” the report argues. “It even results in some poor people being locked up in jail because they cannot afford to pay debts — a modern version of the despised debtors’ prisons.”

Andrew Miller, the county’s prosecuting attorney, said he thinks the Superior Court is right to order criminals to pay restitution to their victims. But he criticized the District Court’s practice of imposing heavy fines on defendants who can’t pay, and he conceded that both courts sometimes go too far in requiring poor people to pay for their trials. “In cases where someone truly can’t pay, I don’t think the court needs to be so aggressive,” he said.

A spokesperson for the Benton County administrator didn’t reply to a message seeking comment.

Under the U.S. Constitution, Americans can’t be jailed for failing to pay their debts when the reason for their failure to pay is poverty. But in Washington and other states, county governments get around that by insisting poor defendants could find a way to pay if they simply tried hard enough. “You hear judges say, ‘Oh, you have a tattoo, you can pay,’” said Vanessa Hernandez, a co-author of the report. “Or, ‘Why don’t you just mow some lawns?’ There’s not a specific enough standard for whether they have the ability to pay.”

Angela Albers, one of five people profiled in the report, spent 21 days in jail in 2012 after incurring more than $3,000 in fines and court fees for a drug arrest, and two charges of driving with a suspended license. “I was getting $126 a week from unemployment,” she told the ACLU. “It wasn’t even enough to pay for rent and food, much less fines. I tried to talk to the clerk and explain my situation, but the clerk just told me that I had to pay the $100 per month the court ordered.”

Although data on the cost of incarcerating people specifically for unpaid debts is hard to come by, Hernandez believes the costs outweigh the benefits. “We could calculate the cost of incarcerating a person for any number of days, but even that is significantly below the real cost of incarceration,” Hernandez said. “You’d have to factor in judicial time, clerk time, and police time in serving these warrants, and that doesn’t even account for lost of productivity when you throw someone in jail.”

The ACLU first investigated this issue in 2010, studying the assessment and collection of court fines and fees in Louisiana, Michigan, Ohio, Georgia and Washington. In New Orleans, 16 men who couldn’t pay their debts were sentenced to jail in the span of one week, according to that report. In Ohio, a woman who couldn’t pay a $250 legal debt was held in jail for over a month. In all five states, cash-strapped local governments jailed poor defendants who couldn’t pay their debts.

Four years later, the practice is still prevalent in many states. Last week, a report by the Human Rights Watch organization revealed that thousands of courts in Southern states jail people who can’t keep up with the fees imposed on them by private probation companies.

Some states have begun curtailing their versions of the practice. In Ohio, the state Supreme Court announced last week that it would hand out “bench cards” to state judges, encouraging them to offer payment plans to people who couldn’t afford their fines.

Hernandez said she hopes that Washington will take even stronger measures. “We recognize that there should be consequences for people’s actions, and that fines and fees can sometimes serve that role,” she said. “But we believe that punishment should be proportionate and that people should have opportunities to meet their obligations, and it seems the system is set up now in a way that doesn’t allow those opportunities.”

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/02/12/debtors-prisons-report_n_4768320.html

12 thoughts on “The U.S. Is Locking People Up For Being Poor

  1. I happen to know a little about sound business. Here we have people that owe debt to the state. They can not pay these fines and charges so they go to jail. The cost per prisoner exceeds the fine often within one month of incarceration. There is electricity, water, food, guards etc. The more prisoners they have the greater the expenses. Show me where that is economical for these cities that complain they are broke. Do they think these people are going to somehow find that money under the mattress and pay up. They don’t have it. They need jobs you know INCOME. So what is the point of this whole fiasco?

    1. It is all just a control trip to do this. They know exactly what they are doing. Ya know that the more they lock up – reguardless if the reasons – the more money they will get from the state or the feds to maintain the pos jails and prisons.

  2. several years ago I watched some 19 yr. old kid in court that was charged with possession of less than 1 oz. of the dreaded herb marijuana, which was treated as a misdomenor carrying a $75 fine and no other criminal penalties (just revenue generation).
    since the kid had already missed a days work for this appearance and it would be just the first of many to come if he contested the charge, he just pled guilty and assumed he’d pay the fine and be on his way. he had the cash on him.
    OOHH, did he get a big surprise then, all kindsa court costs n fees along with the fine including one called ‘victims assistance’, as if there was a ‘victim’ to this heinous ‘crime’?
    bottom line was this kid ended up havin to choke up 360 bucks total n ended up havin to finance the fine with the court (the courts have their own finance system with loan shark interest, plus you hafta be on probation till you pay it off)!
    poor kid!

  3. BEEN THERE , THE JUDGE THAT PULLED THAT SHIT ON ME WAS SOON TO BE thrown off the bench AND SENT PRISON FOR COCAINE CONSPIRACYAnd a NUMBER OF OTHER CHARGES. I HAD MANY OPPORTUNITIES TO WATCH HIS KANGAROO COURT IN SESSION and knew he was rotten. i think the dink still practices law,UPSTANDING PROFESSION I GUESS,…NOT! look up SAL PIEMONTE OF SOLVAY ,N.Y. AN INTERESTING STORY OF KICKBACKS AND CORRUPTION AND OF COURSE THE COCAINE. THE SHIT IS GETTING DEEP PEOPLE

  4. When I was arrested in Round Rock for literally no reason, these were the only kinds of people locked up overnight with me. Everyone in the cell were laughing at each other about it because they knew it was ridiculous, while the police outside the cell gave us all mean looks like we were scum of the Earth.

    There were people with suspended driver’s license, people who either couldn’t pay for their ticket or just had their license plate hanging the wrong way in the window of their car, and even an 18 yr old kid who couldn’t make it to court because he didn’t have a ride and even called up the clerk to tell him that, but the clerk just sent out a police officer to come by and arrest him for missing his court date.

    No violent or cold-blooded murders. Just normal people being unconstitutionally arrested and jailed for no reason just to fill their quota. Thing is it costs more to keep them there and put them through the process than the amount of the damn illegal fine.

  5. There is a difference between jail and prisons the prisons are for over a year sentence the local jails are shorter sentences and are not covered by the federal gov. but local. Usually the city but sometimes the county where there are cities that have no jail. Here it is Seminole County jail. I am sure Orlando has a jail but many small towns do not. Non payment of fines and levies are pretty much local so we have jail time. That is where the expense of maintenance out prices the fine.

    1. They’ve got to be making money off of it somehow, Susan. If there was no profit in it, they would come up with another solution, imo.

        1. GrinNBarett, the probation and parole dept. is anyther big scam if there ever was on. They are all just a big bunch of busy bodied jokers if there ever was a joker.

      1. That`s right #1. Ya know that if some one is on govt benifits – food stamps disability, ect. – that they loose those bennies – I am pretty sure – when they get locked up, at least for the time that they are locked up any way I believe I have heard.

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