Cash-Strapped States Resurrect Debtors' Prisons

Cash-Strapped States Resurrect "Debtors' Prisons"

Wednesday 06 October 2010

by: Nadia Prupis, t r u t h o u t | Report

(Photo: Paula Bailey; Edited: Lance Page / t r u t h o u t)

Two reports published by NYU's Brennan Center for Justice and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) reveal a rising trend of patently unconstitutional practices in cash-strapped states, where a growing number of impoverished people are jailed for being unable to pay their legal fees - including charges for use of public defenders, a guaranteed right in the United States. The resurgence of these draconian "debtors' prisons" has been documented in at least 13 of the 15 states with the largest prison populations in the country, including California, Arizona, Michigan and Alabama.

"Incarcerating people simply because they cannot afford to pay their legal debts is not only unconstitutional but also has a devastating impact upon men and women whose only crime is that they are poor," said ACLU senior staff attorney Eric Balaban.

Many states view the fees as a method for helping to alleviate budget deficits. In New Orleans, Louisiana, legal fines comprise almost two-thirds of criminal courts' operating budgets. But the ACLU found in its report, "In for a Penny: The Rise of America's New Debtors' Prisons," that jailing individuals for failing to pay legal fees actually places the financial burden on the state, wasting taxpayer money and resources to keep those individuals in jail or on public welfare as they struggle to pay their overwhelming debts.

Moreover, these and other penalties creates obstacles for those re-entering society after completing their criminal sentence; the Brennan Center report, "Criminal Justice Debt: A Barrier to Reentry," notes that eight of the 15 states studied suspend driving privileges of individuals who miss debt payments, while seven states require them to complete their full payments before regaining eligibility to vote. Such unnecessary setbacks often pave the way for those on probation to return to jail through no fault of their own.

"We are undermining the integrity of our criminal justice system and creating a two-tiered system of justice in which the poorest among us are punished more harshly than those with means, at a great cost to taxpayers," said ACLU deputy legal director Vanita Gupta.

Imprisoning probationers for failing to pay court debts was found unconstitutional in 1980, when Georgia resident Danny Bearden was sent to prison for two years when he could not pay $550 in legal fees, despite his efforts. In Bearden v. Georgia, the Supreme Court ruled that such practices violated the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment - but states throughout the country have begun openly disregarding these principles in their efforts to balance their budgets.

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The ACLU report highlights a few exemplary cases. Gregory White, a homeless man in Louisiana, was arrested for stealing $39 worth of food from a grocery store and assigned $339 in legal fees; when he was jailed for being unable to pay, White spent 198 days in jail at a cost of $35,000 to the city.

Georgia resident Ora Lee Hurley owed $705 in fines from a 1990 drug possession conviction and remained in jail for eight months for failing to pay.

Kawana Young, a 25-year-old single mother in Michigan, was told after the fact that her community service hours would not satisfy her debts because she had volunteered with a nonprofit organization. Young has since been jailed five times for being unable to pay her fees.

And Percy Dear, a New Orleans resident who suffers from epilepsy, schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, was arrested for begging in 2007. After pleading guilty, Dear was sentenced with either paying an immediate fine of $200 or spending 20 days in jail. Dear was unable to pay his fine at once and was incarcerated. These particular "fine or time" sentences are a glaring example of methods that plainly punish indigent cases while allowing wealthy individuals to go free on the same charges.

Judge Calvin Johnson, who served for 17 years in the Criminal District Court or Orleans Parish, said that regularly sentencing defendants in a "fine or time" method could have cost the city more than it collected. "30 days or $100 - that was something I heard every day," said Johnson in the ACLU report. "Now, 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?"

"People are emerging from the criminal justice process with significant debts that they cannot hope to repay," said Brennan Center Deputy Director Rebekah Diller. "As a result, these fees are creating new paths back to prison for those unable to pay."

Former Montgomery County, Ohio, public defender Glen H. Dewar is profiled in the ACLU report for his efforts in eliminating the state's debtors' prisons. Dewar stated in the report, "My estimate is that 20 to 25 percent of all local incarcerations statewide are for fines and costs, while about 50 percent of arrests are for fines and costs ... [until 2000], none of the persons arrested for nonpayment of fines and costs appeared on any court docket. Nor were they ever scheduled to appear at any particular time before any particular judge or magistrate." Before county jail records were computerized, Dewar said, "the scope of the problem, in terms of both numbers of arrests and days in jail, remained hidden ... the county also expanded jail space at a cost of millions, unaware of the fact that it was not for criminals but debtors."

As noted in the Brennan Center report, several states have also started to 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.

According to the report, "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, for example, the National Legal Aid and Defender Association found that the threat of paying the full cost of assigned counsel resulted in misdemeanor defendants systematically waiving their right to counsel - at a rate of 95 percent in one county." In Virginia, defendants often face up to $1,235 per count for some felonies.

The Brennan Center recommends that states eliminate public defender fees and offer community service programs that build job skills, among other state and local policy reforms; the ACLU similarly recommends that a judicial assessment of a convicted defendant's ability to pay fines must be comprehensive.

Report: Modern day debtors' prisons devastating the poor

(FinalCall.com) - Poor men and women exit America's prisons and jails, believing that they have paid their debts to society, but a new prison study by the ACLU revealed that many are being locked up or threatened because they cannot afford to pay their legal fines.

After a year long investigation into the assessment and collection of fees associated with criminal sentences in Louisiana, Michigan, Ohio, Georgia, and Washington, the ACLU reported in “In for a Penny: The Rise of America's New Debtors' Prisons,” that courts across the U.S. were profiting from debtors' prisons by violating a Supreme Court decision ordering courts to investigate a person's inability to pay before returning them to prison. “In some cases the courts are making decisions to incarcerate someone and the courts are not bearing the costs of having to incarcerate them, so they can make decisions based upon what they feel is appropriate in the circumstances of a defendant without having to bear the consequences of that decision,” said Attorney Eric Balaban, Senior Staff Counsel for the National Prison Project of the ACLU.
In New Orleans, for example, the court's aggressiveness to collect fees stems from the important part those fees play in their operational budget but the money to pay Sheriffs to house men and women who cannot pay those debts are borne by the city, not the courts, he said. One Ohio town with a population of 60 collected more than $400,000 in one year of fees or officially, legal financial obligations, from the mayor's court.
Two of the cases uncovered by the ACLU's investigation were:
•A homeless construction worker in Louisiana named Sean Matthews was convicted of marijuana in 2007 and assessed $498 in fines and costs. After being arrested two years later for failure to pay the fines, he was sent to jail for five months, but it cost the City of New Orleans more than $3,000.
•Kawana Young, a single mother of two in Michigan, was arrested in March and spent three days in jail for failing to pay $300 in fees surrounding minor traffic offenses. Recently laid off and unable to find work, she incurred booking fees for her daily room and board.
According to Atty. Balaban, there are certain fines that undoubtedly disproportionately affect people of color. “African Americans make up 12 percent of the population. As of 2007 they made up approximately 38 percent of the incarcerated population and there are specific fines and fees that only people who are in prison and jail have to pay,” he said.
Those fees include fees for the booking and intake process, and so-called pay-to-stay fees for each day entities house an inmate. “Given that African Americans and people of color are disproportionately represented in our nations' prisons and jails, those particular fines and fees disproportionately affect them,” Atty. Balaban said.
Although the ACLU sought statistics that indicated by race the number of men, women, and children who were incarcerated due to unpaid legal debts, none of the jurisdictions could provide the information, saying they did not keep those figures, especially by race, except Washington State, he said.
Washington State looked at the issue after the Washington State Supreme Court commissioned a study looking at racial disparities in the imposition of fines and fees for people who had been convicted of felonies. He said it found that Hispanics were likely to receive much higher fees than their White counterparts. People convicted of drug offenses were likely to receive higher fees than people convicted of violent offenses, and people of color were more likely to be searched, charged, arrested, criminally prosecuted, and convicted of drug offenses in Washington State and throughout the country than people who are White.
“But certainly, the courts have found this and it's not surprising to say that racial disparities exist at every stage of the criminal justice process, not just in our prisons and jails,” said Atty. Balaban.
Atty. Balaban told The Final Call that the ACLU first learned of the problem in 2009 through Edwina Nowlin, who contacted them after she was jailed in Michigan for not paying court-ordered monthly lodging fees charged by the detention facility that was holding her juvenile son. She was homeless and working part-time at the time she was ordered to make the payments, Atty. Balaban said.
The ACLU in Michigan filed an emergency motion on her behalf and she was eventually released. After her release, the organization's National Prison Project and Racial Justice Program conducted a survey to find out just how widespread her experience was.
Their survey focused on geographically diverse states, states that had larger urban populations than others where the problem seemed to be confined to more rural areas, and states where the problems they had heard about was emblematic of the problems across the country.
“We haven't heard from Congress or received any feed back as of yet but we're very hopeful that Congress will hold oversight hearings on this,” Atty. Balaban said. The ACLU has made specific recommendations to state and local officials to ensure that: defendants are not incarcerated because they cannot pay fines and fees that they can't afford and that courts consider their ability to pay when deciding whether to assess more fees.
The study further recommended that states should repeal all laws that may result in poor defendants being punished more severely than defendants charged with the same offenses who have means.
Geri Silva, executive director of Families to Amend California's Three Strikes Law, said the back story is that constitutionally, everybody is guaranteed a right to counsel, whether they can pay or not, so it is clear from the beginning that people are not going to be able to pay.
She said the irony is that states are jailing people in “cash-strapped” cities for failing to pay their legal fines, but turn around and pay triple or quadruple that amount to put people in jail. “It sort of leads one to believe that perhaps jails and prisons are money making enterprises for the states. All roads lead to prison and all thinking leads to the fact that if they're filling these prisons, it's not about public safety obviously but it has to have something to do with financial gain for the industry itself,” Ms. Silva said.
She reiterated “In For a Penny's” position that men and women who are re-entering into society from prison already face tough obstacles. They have to try to rebuild their lives with reduced or no incomes, worsening credit ratings, poor housing prospects, and greater chances of recidivism.
“How far will they go? Who are they trying to kid with this? How do you get blood out of a turnip? How does somebody who can't pay, pay? Will they then find the one person who had their nails done or something instead of paying? Is that what they're going to do to justify this insanity,” Ms. Silva asked.
According to Ms. Silva, all of these issues that hang over a poor person who has been incarcerated stems from America's building an industry that is skewed, sinister, uncivilized, and centered on punishment. Ask taxpayers if they would rather pay $600 in legal fees or thousands in jail costs and they would pick the more sensible route of less costs, she said.
“The industry itself is tremendous. Can you imagine what it takes to run, say, California State Prisons in terms of food services, clothing, armaments, initially the building trades? It's a multi-billion dollar industry that a great number of people are getting fat off of so it's so disingenuous for them to say they're losing money because people aren't paying their fees,” Ms. Silva added.
Critical Resistance is a prison advocacy group based in Oakland, California that works with people who are incarcerated and re-entering society. Isaac Ontiveros, communications director, said that the ACLU's report unveiled yet another example of the way that the Prison Industrial Complex works to imprison and police people, and how it creates, exacerbates, and thrives on debt and creating debt traps.
People spend a number of years in prisons or jails and the first thing they come out to is an enormous pile of debt, and that affects their inability to gain access to resources around re-entry support, Mr. Ontiveros told The Final Call.
“We're talking basic things like transportation vouchers, housing, job opportunities, they end up being left with a pile of debt and we see how that debt just lands them back in a cage ... The thing to look at is who's being policed, imprisoned, thrown in jail around these tiny infractions and if we look at what communities people are coming out of I don't have to guess that it is poor people, people of color, and that the state, local government puts a premium on policing people of color,” he added.
He said the whole idea is around social control and who is desirable and who is not. One solution is to prioritize resources to create programs that build up communities. The pressure for those resources will come from the ground, grassroots mobilizing, not from politicians on local, state, or national levels.
“It's going to come from people from the community, organizing their community, and either building these things themselves, or putting pressure on politicians to make a demand for resources to be used for things that have shown time and time again to build up communities,” he added.
According to Kurt Kaaekuahiwi, an intern with Critical Resistance, the definite intent of debtors' prisons is to keep people within the system, but resources should be put into educational or job training programs within prisons to help those men and women re-entering secure jobs once they are released.
“We have to divest from policing, divest from incarceration, and divest from prison expansion. Obviously, these monies that are being appropriated are through the general fund, which is from our tax dollars, and being used to further criminalize, stigmatize, and keep us trapped in the system, but that money is not used to support our needs of affordable housing or job opportunities,” he said.
(The full report: “In for a Penny: The Rise of America's New Debtors' Prisons,” can be read at www.aclu.org/prisoners-rights-racial-justice/penny-rise-americas-new-debtors-prisons)

New ACLU report reveals info about state debtors prisons

Debtors prisons are unconstitutional in Ohio. State law requires anyone who does not pay a fine to have a hearing to determine whether they can pay. If they can NOT, courts must explore other options. Courts are NOT allowed to imprison people who cannot afford to pay the fine.

But in an interview with Ohio Public Radio's Jo Ingles, James Hardiman with the American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio explains a new report by his organization that shows poor people are sometimes jailed when they cannot afford to pay their court costs.

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Debtors’ Prisons Make a Comeback…in the U.S.

America’s jails are increasingly becoming de facto debtors’ prisons as the legal system levies more fees than ever on individuals who wind up behind bars simply because they can’t pay their bills or the administrative penalties imposed by judges. Both the Brennan Center for Justice and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) have issued reports on the rise of debt-related incarceration, noting that courts are administering more fees these days as a way to make up for budget shortfalls.

 

The ACLU points out that throwing people in prison for not paying their financial obligations has been outlawed since 1983. “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,” states the ACLU. “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.”

 

Like the ACLU report, the Brennan Center’s investigation tells the stories of individuals who found themselves serving time because they had no money. One person in Pennsylvania wound up with three times more in fees than the amount of the original fines and restitution.

 

In many cases, the cost of keeping the arrested men and women in jail is far more than the fines themselves. In some cases they have been charged a booking fee and a daily fee for being imprisoned, which is turned over to a private collection agency for action. In Florida, private debt collectors are allowed to add a 40% surcharge to the amount sought by the state.

FEMA Approves $92,000 in Grant Money for Residents of Shelby County

Harlan, IA – FEMA inspectors have been visiting damaged homes in Shelby County to meet with residents who have reported summer flood and storm damage.
Shelby County was added to a presidential disaster declaration Friday, and FEMA has already approved more than $92,000 in grants.
To be eligible for possible assistance, residents must first register with FEMA.
Shelby County residents who had ANY amount of storm or flood damage in June, July, or August should register.  The deadline is Nov. 12.  To register, call 1-800-621-3362 or visit DisasterAssistance.gov.
So far, FEMA has received more than 12,000 registrations from residents of 38 Iowa counties.
Reported by Robert Maday

FEMA: $30 million-plus spent after snowstorms

U.S. taxpayers chipped in more than $30 million to pay for the cleanup of February's snowstorms in Pennsylvania and Delaware, according to the Federal Emergency Management Agency. FEMA has committed $7.6 million to Delaware, it said Monday, and has spent $25.3 million in Pennsylvania for damage from the two storms that hit the region from Feb. 5 through 11. In that period, an unprecedented 44.3 inches of snow was measured officially in Philadelphia, part of a seasonal record total of 78.7 inches. A federal disaster was declared for the entire state of Delaware on March 31, 2010. The Pennsylvania declaration, which covered 23 counties, including Chester, Delaware and Montgomery, was issued April 16. Most of the money, made available to state and local governments, helped pay for "protective measures" such as snow-removal, plowing, and road deicing

Read more: http://www.philly.com/inquirer/local/20101019_FEMA___30_million-plus_spent_after_snowstorms.html#ixzz12oJSLn00
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Disaster Assistance Deadline Extended

The office of Governor Chet Culver has been notified that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has granted a request to extend the registration period for disaster assistance. The registration period had been scheduled to end on October 13.

Iowans in 35 counties now have until Nov. 12 to register for Individual Assistance, which can include grants for temporary housing and home repairs, low-cost loans and other programs to help individuals and business owners recover from the effects of flooding and severe weather that occurred this past summer.  

“The continued volume of registrations indicates impacted Iowans are still assessing their damages and need additional time to apply for aid to help them in their recovery,” said Iowa Homeland Security and Emergency Management’s Pat Hall, who is also serving as the state coordinating officer for this disaster.

The counties included in the registration extension are: Appanoose, Black Hawk, Cherokee, Clayton, Decatur, Delaware, Dubuque, Fayette, Franklin, Hamilton, Howard, Humboldt, Ida, Jackson, Jasper, Jones, Kossuth, Lee, Lucas, Lyon, Mahaska, Marion, Monroe, O’Brien, Osceola, Polk, Ringgold, Sioux, Story, Taylor, Union, Wapello, Warren, Webster, and Wright.

Homeowners, renters or business owners affected by the storms should register for assistance by calling FEMA’s toll-free number, 800-621-FEMA (3362) or TTY 800-462-7585 for the speech- and hearing-impaired 7 a.m. to 10 p.m., seven days a week until further notice. Multilingual operators are available to answer calls during this time. Flood survivors may register for assistance online anytime at www.disasterassistance.gov.