Across the country, cash-strapped cities and counties are throwing
poor defendants in jail for failing to pay legal debts that they can
never hope to manage. On Monday, the
New York Times
told the story of Gina Ray, whose $179 speeding ticket mushroomed into
$3,170 in fines and fees and 40 days in jail when she couldn’t afford to
pay it. Gina is one of many swept up in America’s new debtors’ prisons,
a growing problem nationwide.
(Image: ACLU)
Also this week, the
ABA Journal told
the story of the Philadelphia courts’ aggressive efforts to collect
unpaid fines and fees, many of which are decades old. Ameen Muqtadir was
billed nearly $41,000 for two failures to appear in court dating back
to 1991 and 1997—even though he’d been incarcerated at the time of each
hearing. Meanwhile, Hakim Waliyyudin spent 12 days in jail while he
raised the money to post a $1,000 bond with the court; after the
criminal charges against him were dismissed, the court clerk told him
that he owed another $9,000 plus $1,500 in collection fees because of a
missed court date. Although a free attorney from Community Legal
Services ultimately convinced the court to waive the judgment and
collection charges against Hakim, many other indigent defendants around
the country face further jail time when they cannot pay court-ordered
fines and fees.
As the ACLU emphasized in its October 2010 report,
In for a Penny: The Rise of America’s New Debtors’ Prisons,
jailing people for unpaid court debts imposes devastating human costs
on men and women whose only remaining crime is that they are poor. Upon
release, they face the daunting prospect of having to rebuild their
lives yet again, while their substantial legal debts pose a significant,
and at times insurmountable, barrier as they attempt to re-enter
society. They see their incomes fall, their credit ratings worsen, their
prospects for housing and employment dim, and their chances of ending
up back in jail or prison increase. Many must make hard choices each
month as they attempt to balance their needs and those of their families
with their legal financial obligations. They also remain tethered to
the criminal justice system—sometimes decades after they complete their
sentences—and live under constant threat of being sent back to jail or
prison, solely because they cannot pay what has become an unmanageable
legal debt.
Aggressive collection of legal financial obligations creates a
two-tiered system of justice in which the poorest defendants are
punished more harshly than those with means. Although courts attempt to
collect legal financial obligations from indigent and affluent
defendants alike, those who can afford to pay their legal debts avoid
jail, complete their sentences, and move on with their lives. Those
unable to pay end up incarcerated or under continued court supervision.
Perversely, they also often end up paying much more in fines and fees
than defendants who can pay their legal financi'al
obligations. Additionally, the imposition of legal financial obligations
disproportionately affects racial and ethnic minorities, who are
disproportionately represented among the prisoner population Courts have found that incarcerating people for debts they couldn’t afford to pay violates the 14
th
Amendment. Further, it creates hardships for men and women who already
struggle with re-entering society after being released from prison or
jail, and wastes resources in an often fruitless effort to extract
payments. In an age when more Americans are deprived of their liberty
than ever before, unnecessarily and unfairly, we should be shutting down
debtors’ prisons, not creating more of them.
© 2012 ACLU
Carl Takei is a Staff Attorney at the
National Prison Project of the
American Civil Liberties Union.
He litigates prison conditions class action suits in federal court and
performs state-based advocacy against overincarceration, including
fighting unnecessary jail expansion projects and working to stop
modern-day debtors’ prison practices in local courts and jails.
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