Oboy! Another way to deal with joblessness: Debtors' prisons

[FourScore]

Wed Dec 14, 2011 at 03:03 PM PST
Oboy! Another way to deal with joblessness: Debtors' prisons
by Meteor Blades



What with the recent call for ending child-labor laws, the relentless assault on unions and Gilded Age levels of inequality in wealth and income, you might get the sense we're reliving the 19th century. Stir into that toxic mix debtors' prisons and it's clear we'll not soon be seeing an end of efforts on the part of the powers-that-be to return us to the good ol' days in which we can all be Little Dorrit, but with Facebook accounts.

A year ago the American Civil Liberties Union concluded in its year-long investigation, In For a Penny: The Rise of America's New Debtors' Prisons, that thousands of individuals with unpaid legal financial obligations were being jailed. This was done, in many instances, in direct contradiction of the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Bearden v. Georgia nearly three decades ago.

NPR reported earlier this week that collection agencies are using tougher measures to force people pay their debt. These include filing lawsuits. When that is done, a notice to appear in court is supposed to be sent to the debtor. But the notices seem to go missing quite often. So people wind up being arrested on failure-to-appear warrants and they can subsequently wind up in jail for long periods.

Take, for example, what happened to Robin Sanders in Illinois.

She was driving home when an officer pulled her over for having a loud muffler. But instead of sending her off with a warning, the officer arrested Sanders, and she was taken right to jail...

MUCH MORE AT: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/12/14/1045351/-Oboy!

[DirkGently]

1. This is a grotesque abuse of the law.

[suffragette]

2. Scary times

Here's a link to the ACLU report:
http://www.aclu.org/prisoners-rights-racial-justice/penny-rise-americas-new-debtors-prisons

And K&R

[Downwinder]

3. A bit short sighted considering the cost of keeping someone in custody.

[cyberpj]

4. Private prisons for profit - they're everywhere, and counting...... n/t.

[liberalhistorian]

5. What's especially sick is that

people are being jailed for medical debt, for having the audacity to get sick or injured when they're uninsured or without enough money to pay their bill and even for relatively small amounts. The Wall Street Journal, of all papers, even did an expose on that several years ago, the use of jail against those with medical debt, some who worked more than one job yet still couldn't afford insurance or care when they had a medical emergency or illness. Beyond sick.