While there are angels in our communities, working to help their fellow American, our federal and state and local municipalities are usually less than humane in their dealings with the homeless. The most impoverished people in our communities are both stigmatized for being homeless, and preyed upon by the state for being poor. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution has the distressing story of Sean Ramsey, a homeless man who spent two months and two weeks in jail after he could not pay the $200 bond required by Georgia’s court. Why was he arrested? He was on the street, holding up a sign that said “Homeless, please help.” Oh, and the Georgian justice system didn’t just realize that they were imprisoning someone because they were poor, they were forced to release him by activists.
The suit was brought against Fulton County Sheriff Ted Jackson because Ramsey is in his custody, but its real focus is the Atlanta Municipal Court which the center argues routinely throws poor people in jail for low-level offenses.
“This is a case that sounds like it came out of another country, one not governed by the rule of law,” Sarah Geraghty, managing attorney with the Southern Center for Human Rights, told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “And it is but one example of the dysfunction and fundamental unfairness of Atlanta’s pretrial system.”
But don’t worry everyone, this was just a computer networking issue, according to the Sheriff’s Office.
In a statement on Thursday, the Sheriff’s Office said “jail staff recognized that Mr. Ramsey had not been to court and notified the Solicitor’s Office.” The statement said there had been a problem with the computer system that links the courts, prosecutors and the jail. Geraghty said Ramsey was released only after she gave the Solicitor’s office a copy of the petition.
I totally get that. Some times my dad calls me up to figure out networking issues with his All-in-one printer at home. I usually put it off for about two and a half months, or until my dad has a lawyer call me and demand that I help my father out.* And while the courts are trying to pretend that Mr. Ramsey’s case was a special snowflake that proves the exception and not the rule, reality says otherwise.
Henry Dalton is another poor person held in the Fulton County Jail for months because he was unable to post bond — in this case $500 bond. He was charged with indecent exposure after he was observed not wearing pants in Woodruff Park in downtown Atlanta. Formal charges were filed in Fulton County State Court on Nov. 17 and remains behind bars.
“He was found incompetent in Municipal Court and was bound over to State Court and then lost in the system for 100 days,” Geraghty said.
It’s easier pretending that our society’s failure to house and provide for everyone doesn’t exist than it does to look in the mirror; and our justice system affords us a way of disappearing—for a time—our discomfort.
*I never take longer than 24 hours to respond to parental IT complaints.