{"id":25878,"date":"2014-05-22T00:01:01","date_gmt":"2014-05-22T05:01:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=25878"},"modified":"2014-05-21T16:28:54","modified_gmt":"2014-05-21T21:28:54","slug":"dickens-2-0-debt-prisons-of-the-21st-century","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2014\/05\/22\/dickens-2-0-debt-prisons-of-the-21st-century\/","title":{"rendered":"Dickens 2.0 – debt prisons of the 21st century"},"content":{"rendered":"

At Outside the Beltway<\/em>, James Joyner<\/a> calls attention to the widespread practice of sending minor offenders to prison for failing to pay minor fines:<\/p>\n

NPR<\/em>\u2019s \u201cMorning Edition\u201d has been running a series called \u201cGuilty and Charged,\u201d chronicling the plight of Americans forced to go to jail because they\u2019re unable to pay the court fees and fines associated with very minor infractions. The Supreme Court ostensibly outlawed the practice three decades ago but left the determination as to whether defendants are truly to poor to pay or simply unwilling to trial court judges. Not shockingly, perhaps, they almost invariably presume the latter.<\/p>\n

You can listen to Tuesday\u2019s segment, \u201cUnpaid Court Fees Land The Poor In 21st Century Debtors\u2019 Prisons<\/a>,\u201d at the link. Unfortunately, they only have the audio and not a transcription. Aside from what I\u2019ve already written in the introduction above, what really stood out to me was the sheer contempt judges displayed to indigent defendants. Despite being highly educated professionals supposedly trained in the law and selected for their ability to dispassionately way evidence and reach just results, those featured on the program were positively knee-jerk and sneering. It was as if they\u2019d plucked some random yahoo from a Denny\u2019s, dressed him in a black robe, and had him preside over the trial.<\/p>\n

Today\u2019s follow-up, \u201cSupreme Court Ruling Not Enough To Prevent Debtors\u2019 Prisons<\/a>,\u201d was if anything more infuriating. It dove deep into the case of Kyle Dewitt, an Iraq War vet who went to jail and got caught up in an unending series of problems with the law over catching the wrong species of bass at the wrong time of year.<\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve long been of mind that we ought to do away with fines as a means of punishment altogether. Whether paying $150 for exceeding the speed limit (almost always some nominal fine for the offense and a much higher amount for \u201ccourt costs,\u201d owed even if one just mails in the fine and never goes to court) is a deterrent depends entirely on one\u2019s financial circumstances. It was a big deal when I was in college; it\u2019s a nuisance now. Further, those with the means will often spend far more than the fine plus court costs to hire an attorney to plead it to an offense that doesn\u2019t come with points that go against their license or their insurance record. It\u2019s incredibly inequitable.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

At Outside the Beltway, James Joyner calls attention to the widespread practice of sending minor offenders to prison for failing to pay minor fines: NPR\u2019s \u201cMorning Edition\u201d has been running a series called \u201cGuilty and Charged,\u201d chronicling the plight of Americans forced to go to jail because they\u2019re unable to pay the court fees and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,13],"tags":[52,343,267,91,752],"class_list":["post-25878","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-law","category-usa","tag-absurd","tag-crimeandpunishment","tag-justice","tag-poverty","tag-supremecourt"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-6Jo","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25878","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25878"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25878\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25879,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25878\/revisions\/25879"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25878"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25878"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25878"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}