Both the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the Brennan Center for Justice released reports in early October on a disturbing trend in the American justice system: the abuse of jail sentences and probation to collect more money in fines for cash-strapped courts.
The ACLU report, “In For a Penny: The Rise of America’s New Debtor’s Prisons,” focuses on interviews and personal stories in the five states they predicted to be the worst offenders (Louisiana, Michigan, Ohio, Georgia, and Washington). The Brennan Center report, “Criminal Justice Debt: A Barrier to Reentry,” covers ten states in addition to the five in the ACLU report (California, Texas, Florida, New York, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Arizona, North Carolina, Virginia, Alabama and Missouri) and provides more detailed statistics on a wider array of abuses.
In each of the 15 states examined (covering 60 percent of all state criminal filings), courts placed special “user fees” on defendants to generate revenue.
These fees differ from other legal financial obligations because their sole, express purpose is to put money into the state’s budget instead of punishing the criminal or giving the victim restitution. As many states face budget cuts, they are turning increasingly to these types of fees to fund their court systems. In one example, the district court of Orleans Parish in Louisiana, the ACLU estimated that these fees totaled almost two thirds of the court’s general fund...
The United States inherited a tradition of incarceration for private debts from colonial times. By the 1830s, it had reached such absurd proportions that in some states there were three to five times as many people imprisoned for debt as for actual crimes. Imprisonment for debt was abolished under federal law in 1833, but many states continued the practice. In particular, Southern states would imprison debtors and lease prisoners out to plantation owners as a means of effectively perpetuating slavery after the Civil War...
The Brennan Center noted that in all 15 states its report examined, individuals have been arrested for missing a court-ordered debt payment or failing to appear at a debt-related proceeding. Only after a few days in jail was a hearing granted to determine whether the individual willfully missed his or her obligations. This practice is particularly disturbing because every state except Ohio assessed mandatory fees without taking into consideration ability to pay...
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2010/oct2010/debt-o27.shtml
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