Suppose you commit a misdemeanor (shame on you!) and go to court. But wait—you have to pay for your public defender. S/he doesn't do such a hot job and you lose. But wait—you have to pay fines, restitution, and court costs before you go to jail. But wait—you have to pay an admission fee to go to jail and a daily fee for each day you spend there. Can't pay? Too bad. You're piling up penalties and interest the whole time, and the collection agency will never let up on you.
They call these crazy charges user fees. You must pay to go to court, and you go to jail if you don’t pay. Looks like we're taking our country back to debtors’ prisons, and they're for-profit prisons at that.
This madness relates more to the squeezing of government than to the prisons themselves. States and towns need money and they're picking on the little guy. It's like speed traps for everybody who has some bad luck.
Many of these cases involve people who are in court for debt collection in the first place. They can be arrested for failing to make payments or for missing a court appearance. In Minnesota, arrest warrants for debtors have increased 60% during the past four years.
In for a Penny: the Rise of America’s New Debtor’s Prisons by the ACLU and Criminal Justice Debt: A Barrier to Reentry by the Brennan Center for Justice tell us that states are increasingly imprisoning people for being unable to pay their debts.
The ACLU investigated legal financial obligations (LFOs), a general term that includes all fines, fees, and costs associated with criminal sentences, in Louisiana, Michigan, Ohio, Georgia, and Washington. Amounts are growing and obligations are being piled on by these and other states in order to raise revenue, not for any purpose associated with law enforcement.
Throwing people in prison for not paying their financial obligations has been outlawed since 1983, and the highest court in the land did the outlawing. The ACLU says that
incarcerating people simply because they cannot afford to pay their legal debts not only is unconstitutional but it has a devastating impact upon men and women whose only crime is that they are poor. The sad truth is that debtors’ prisons are flourishing today, more than two decades after the Supreme Court [in Bearden v. Georgia] prohibited imprisoning those who are too poor to pay their legal debts.
Speaking of illegal fees, many states are charging the defendant for the use of a public defender.
Wait a minute. Isn’t everyone entitled to legal representation? You have the right to an attorney. If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be provided for you.
Not always.
The Brennan report points out that
states utilize practices that violate the Sixth Amendment, which guarantees defendants a right to counsel. Florida, North Carolina, and Virginia have all implemented mandatory defender fees and provide no opportunity to waive them for indigent cases. Defender fees often discourage individuals from exercising their constitutional right to an attorney, leading to wrongful convictions, over-incarceration, and significant burdens on the operation of courts.
In Michigan, misdemeanor defendants waive counsel at a rate of 95 percent in one county. In Virginia, defendants often face up to $1,235 per count for some felonies.
There’s got to be some leeway somewhere.
Nope. Fourteen of the fifteen states with the most prisoners charge late fees, payment plan fees, and interest if the person can’t fork over the entire amount, without regard to circumstances. Minor offenses can lead to disaster. According to the Brennan report,
One person in Pennsylvania faced $2,464 in fees alone, approximately three times the amount imposed for fines and restitution. In some states, local government fees, on top of statewide fees, add to fee burdens.
These debts often are turned over to collection agencies and the amount can keep growing for years. Even a traffic stop can escalate into a nightmare, according to the ACLU report.
To make up for budget shortfalls, some counties in Georgia aggressively pursue fines and fees in their traffic courts, and refer those defendants who cannot immediately pay to private probation supervision companies, which charge monthly fees that often double or triple the amount of money [originally owed].
Doesn’t this insane practice cost more in incarceration than it generates in payments?
Well, yes.
Brennan Center analysis of one North Carolina county’s collection efforts found that in 2009 the government arrested 564 individuals and jailed 246 of them for failing to pay debt and update address information, but that the amount it ultimately collected from this group was less than what it spent on their incarceration.
Thirty days or $100 is a phrase often heard in the courtroom, says Judge Calvin Johnson of Orleans Parish, Louisiana. "How can you describe a system where the city pays $23 a day to the Sheriff to house someone in jail for 30 days to collect $100 as anything other than crazy?" But don’t worry, the costs of imprisonment are often covered—by the prisoners.
In some states, prisoners pay a booking fee and a daily fee for being jailed. Then collection firms can hound the prisoner after release for the entire amount involved. In Florida, private debt collectors can add a 40% surcharge to what the legal system is trying to wring out of these folks.
Any questions?
Let me get this straight.
We put people in jail because they can’t pay for their day in court.
Then in addition to restitution, fines, defender fees, court costs, and fees to use the legal system, we charge them to go to jail and to take up space in jail, or we put them on probation so that they lose their job or worse?
Then we add collection fees to the restitution, fines, defender fees, court costs, user fees, penalties, interest, and jail fees?
And sometimes this starts with being unable to pay some bills or being picked up for speeding or punching out a guy in a bar?
Yep, them's the possibilities. Better behave yourself. Debtors’ prison might be lurking in your future.
More links
Naked Capitalism: Jail for Unpaid Debt in Six States
Another link
The New York Times