Tornado Alley (PROG)

[F6]

Return of Debtors’ Prisons

Editorial
Published: July 13, 2012

A tenet of the American legal system is that it treats the poor and rich alike. The Supreme Court made this clear in 1970 [ http://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/399/235 ], 1971 [ http://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/401/395 ] and 1983 [ http://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/461/660 ], ruling that it is fundamentally unfair and violates equal protection under the Constitution for a judge to lock up an indigent or unemployed person because he cannot afford to pay a speeding ticket or a fine for a misdemeanor.

Yet judges routinely jail people to make them pay fines even when they have no money to pay. As Ethan Bronner reported last week in The Times [ http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/03/us/probation-fees-multiply-as-companies-profit.html (two posts back at http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=77198091 )], minor offenders who cannot pay a fine or fee often find themselves in jail cells.

And felony offenders who have completed their prison sentences are often sent back to jail when they cannot pay fees and fines they owe because they could not earn money while locked up. Often, these defendants are not told that they have a right to a court-appointed lawyer [ http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/historics/USSC_CR_0407_0025_ZS.html ] to challenge their detention.

This devastating problem has gotten far worse the past five years, the result of budget-strapped state courts looking for sources of revenue and ever more poor people becoming ensnared in the court system. For decades, state court systems have gotten short shrift in the budget process and are often starved of revenue. Since the recession began, courts have increasingly had to fend for themselves by imposing fees on criminal defendants to address budget gaps. In Cambria County, Pa. [ http://www.brennancenter.org/content/resource/criminal_justice_debt_a_barrier_to_reentry/ ], for example, the Court of Common Pleas imposed 26 fees on a woman convicted of a drug crime, including $8 each for postage and judicial computers.

This revenue-oriented approach is made worse by the increasing use of for-profit companies to collect fees owed to the courts. They add hefty fees of their own to make their profits and have gotten judges to issue arrest warrants if someone has not paid up — with no apparent need to consider a person’s inability to pay.

State judicial leaders need to take on these indefensible practices. They should require trial judges to assess individuals’ ability to pay and reduce fines to what an offender can afford or to impose community service time in lieu of fines. They also need to monitor and discipline judges who continue to allow the poor to be imprisoned, flouting the Constitution, Supreme Court holdings and basic fairness.

© 2012 The New York Times Company

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/14/opinion/return-of-debtors-prisons.html