If owing money isn't a criminal offense anymore in America, why are so many debtors being sent to prison? People need to pay the bills, says New Deal 2.0's Bryce Covert, but throwing them in jail won't solve anything. As Americans use credit cards to charge food and clothing as prices go higher and wages only drop, they need to be punished for being fraudulent, says Covert—but not by putting them in prison.
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This ACLU report presents the results of a yearlong investigation into modern-day "debtors' prisons," and shows that poor defendants are being jailed at increasingly alarming rates for failing to pay legal debts they can never hope to afford. The report details how across the country, in the face of mounting budget deficits, states are more aggressively going after poor people who have already served their criminal sentences. These modern-day debtors' prisons impose devastating human costs, waste taxpayer money and resources, undermine our criminal justice system, are racially skewed, and create a two-tiered system of justice.
- Debtors' prison - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
- Debtors' Prisons | Southern Center for Human Rights
The United States Supreme Court in Bearden v. Georgia, 461 U.S. 660 (1983), held that courts cannot imprison a person for failure to pay a criminal fine unless the failure to pay was “willful.” However, this constitutional commandment is often ignored.
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