{"id":27452,"date":"2014-08-21T07:45:07","date_gmt":"2014-08-21T12:45:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=27452"},"modified":"2014-08-21T08:16:51","modified_gmt":"2014-08-21T13:16:51","slug":"ferguson-authorities-issue-an-average-of-about-3-warrants-and-1-5-cases-per-household","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2014\/08\/21\/ferguson-authorities-issue-an-average-of-about-3-warrants-and-1-5-cases-per-household\/","title":{"rendered":"Ferguson authorities issue an average of &#8220;about 3 warrants and 1.5 cases per household&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The relationship between the Ferguson police and the residents of the municipality seem to have been on a weird footing long before the current face-off, as <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cato.org\/blog\/petty-offenses-police-community-relations-ferguson\" target=\"_blank\">Walter Olson<\/a> points out:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Reading through <a href=\"http:\/\/www.newsweek.com\/ferguson-profiling-police-courts-shooting-264744\" target=\"_blank\">this <em>Newsweek<\/em> article<\/a> on the troubled relations between police and residents in Ferguson, Mo. before this month\u2019s blowup, this passage jumped out at me: <\/p>\n<ul>\n<p><em>\u201cDespite Ferguson\u2019s relative poverty, fines and court fees comprise the second largest source of revenue for the city, a total of 2,635,400,\u201d according to the ArchCity Defenders report. And in 2013, the Ferguson Municipal Court issued 24,532 arrest warrants and 12,018 cases, \u201cor about 3 warrants and 1.5 cases per household.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n<\/ul>\n<p>My first reaction \u2013 maybe yours too \u2013 was \u201cis that a misprint?\u201d Three arrest warrants <em>per household<\/em> in Ferguson last year?  <\/p>\n<p>Now let\u2019s stipulate that some of those warrants were written against out-of-towners, especially in matters arising from traffic offenses, tickets being a key revenue source for many municipalities in St. Louis\u2019s North County. Yet here\u2019s a second statistic some will find surprising: while reported property-crime rates in Ferguson have run well above the national average for years, <a href=\"http:\/\/marginalrevolution.com\/marginalrevolution\/2014\/08\/ferguson-fact-of-the-day.html\" target=\"_blank\">violent-crime rates have not<\/a>. After a high period that lasted through 2008, they have <a href=\"http:\/\/www.usatoday.com\/story\/news\/nation-now\/2014\/08\/14\/ferguson-police-department-details\/14064451\/\" target=\"_blank\">declined steadily<\/a> to a point where last year Ferguson had about the same rate of violent crime as the nation generally. <\/p>\n<p>What seems clear at this point is that Ferguson \u2013 while <a href=\"http:\/\/fortune.com\/2014\/08\/18\/ferguson-emerson-electric\/\" target=\"_blank\">in some ways<\/a> a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/news\/storyline\/wp\/2014\/08\/12\/why-the-police-shooting-riots-in-ferguson-mo-had-little-to-do-with-ferguson\/\" target=\"_blank\">nicer and safer town than some have imagined<\/a> \u2013 does suffer from a unusual degree of antagonism between police and residents, an antagonism that crucially involves race (the town is an <a href=\"http:\/\/www.psmag.com\/navigation\/politics-and-law\/fergusons-missouri-city-council-black-white-race-different-88564\/\" target=\"_blank\">extreme outlier<\/a> in its now-famous extent of black underrepresentation in elected office) and yet has other vital dimensions as well.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><strong>Update<\/strong>: <a href=\"http:\/\/marginalrevolution.com\/marginalrevolution\/2014\/08\/ferguson-and-the-debtors-prison.html\" target=\"_blank\">Alex Tabarrok<\/a> says this is an example of the return of debtor&#8217;s prisons in modern America.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>How does a stop for <a href=\"http:\/\/www.msnbc.com\/rachel-maddow-show\/jaywalking\" target=\"_blank\">jaywalking<\/a> turn into a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.motherjones.com\/politics\/2014\/08\/3-unarmed-black-african-american-men-killed-police\" target=\"_blank\">homicide<\/a> and how does that turn into an American town essentially coming under military control with <a href=\"http:\/\/www.usnews.com\/news\/articles\/2014\/08\/14\/ferguson-and-the-shocking-nature-of-us-police-militarization\" target=\"_blank\">snipers<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.npr.org\/blogs\/thetwo-way\/2014\/08\/18\/341233889\/more-mayhem-in-ferguson-tear-gas-looting-gunshots\" target=\"_blank\">tear gas<\/a>, and a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.politico.com\/story\/2014\/08\/ferguson-faa-no-fly-zone-110138.html\" target=\"_blank\">no-fly zone<\/a>? We don\u2019t yet know exactly what happened between the two individuals on the day in question but events like this don\u2019t happen without a deeper context. Part of the context is the return of debtor\u2019s prisons that I <a href=\"http:\/\/marginalrevolution.com\/marginalrevolution\/2012\/04\/debtors-prison-for-failure-to-pay-for-your-own-trial.html\" target=\"_blank\">wrote about in 2012<\/a>:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<p><em>Debtor\u2019s prisons are supposed to be illegal in the United States but today poor people who fail to pay even small criminal justice fees are routinely being imprisoned. The problem has gotten worse recently because strapped states have dramatically increased the number of criminal justice fees\u2026.Failure to pay criminal justice fees can result in revocation of an individual\u2019s drivers license, arrest and imprisonment. Individuals with revoked licenses who drive (say to work to earn money to pay their fees) and are apprehended can be further fined and imprisoned. Unpaid criminal justice debt also results in damaged credit reports and reduced housing and employment prospects. Furthermore, failure to pay fees can mean a violation of probation and parole terms which makes an individual ineligible for Federal programs such as food stamps, Temporary Assistance to Needy Family funds and Social Security Income for the elderly and disabled.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/ul>\n<p>[&#8230;]<\/p>\n<p>You don\u2019t get <strong>$321 in fines and fees and 3 warrants <em>per household<\/em><\/strong> from an <a href=\"http:\/\/marginalrevolution.com\/marginalrevolution\/2014\/08\/ferguson-fact-of-the-day.html\" target=\"_blank\">about-average crime rate<\/a>. You get numbers like this from bullshit arrests for jaywalking and constant \u201clow level harassment involving traffic stops, court appearances, high fines, and the threat of jail for failure to pay.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>If you have money, for example, you can easily get a speeding ticket converted to a non-moving violation. But if you don\u2019t have money it\u2019s often the start of a downward spiral that is hard to pull out of<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The relationship between the Ferguson police and the residents of the municipality seem to have been on a weird footing long before the current face-off, as Walter Olson points out: Reading through this Newsweek article on the troubled relations between police and residents in Ferguson, Mo. before this month\u2019s blowup, this passage jumped out at [&hellip;]<\/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":[343,989,98,91],"class_list":["post-27452","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-law","category-usa","tag-crimeandpunishment","tag-missouri","tag-police","tag-poverty"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-78M","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27452","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=27452"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27452\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27457,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27452\/revisions\/27457"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27452"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27452"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27452"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}