Debtor's Prisons Are Back, Baby - How to Avoid Imprisonment for Being Poor in America

by Ryan Vagabundo

"If you ever go to Houston, boy you better walk right /

And you better not stagger, and you better not fight /

Sheriff Rocko will arrest you, Eddie Boone will take you down /

You can bet your bottom dollar, penitentiary bound" - Leadbelly

If you're in America, it is a real good idea to keep an eye on political news right now, particularly if you're a digital nomad dependent on free travel and relative social stability. That goes triple if you don't have a whole lot of money.

That's why this little item caught my eye recently - AG Jeff Sessions retracted an Obama administration letter of guidance instructing state and local courts not to pile fees and fines on people too poor to pay them. Basically, it starts a loop where the person can't pay the fee, which gets them jailed, which makes it even harder for them to get out of poverty.

As the article linked above points out, the Obama admin issued this letter in direct response to a federal investigation into Ferguson's justice system (in the wake of the Michael Brown shooting and subsequent riots). Though it wasn't their original aim, investigators turned up clear evidence that the city government was using trumped-up petty fines as a revenue stream. Ferguson's head of finance, in collusion with the local judge, instructed the city's officers to hand out fines for trivial things like candy. Fines ranging from $300 - $700 for things like jaywalking and having weeds in your front yard. When people failed to pay them, arrest warrants were immediately written up for them. The main reason they were so gung-ho with the fines - aside from the usual rural south repression of minorities - is that the city was leaning on it as a major revenue stream.

Most states do allow imprisonment for failure to pay debts to their justice departments (like fines). Most just aren't as blatant about using them to drum up money, and most areas give poor people the option of community service, payment plans or other ways to avoid having an arrest warrant drawn up on them.

It Isn't Just Hazzard County

Don't let the Ferguson example make you think this is just a rural, Republican-heavy-area issue.

For example, there's a long history of this being done to homeless people everywhere, including some of the most flamingly liberal cities. I know from direct experience that San Francisco used to be notorious for fining homeless people for doing things they need to do to survive - camping in a public place, being in a park after hours, and so on - in amounts they clearly have no means to pay. So they don't pay, the unpaid fine eventually turns into a warrant, which gets them locked up the next time the police stop them. I haven't spent much time there in years now so I don't know if the city is still bad about this, apparently now they just have buttplug-lookin' Robocops go around moving people along instead.

The major driver for this seems to be budget deficits, though. If localities can't come up with more lucrative revenue streams, and state and local laws clear the path for this sort of thing, there's a good chance they'll go the "debtor's prison" route.

So basically, the poorer the area, the more you need to watch your ass and make sure you're coming in well-funded. The first macro guideline you might use that occurs to me is this map of states that require the most federal aid:

There happens to be a lot of rural, southern Republican areas in that dark red, but that's not universal. Oregon jumps out, for example. The deal there is that Portland and the college towns are wealthy liberal bastions, but outside of that there's still all sorts of Pacific Northwest Redneck areas with nothing much going on but logging. Maine too, which I don't know much about, but I do know they elected this moron as governor twice so I'm not exactly shocked if this sort of shit flies in communities there.

That's the immediate concern, but I think it's also time to take seriously that there's an outside shot at America's government entirely failing sometime in the next few years, and if it does means like this could be rolled out more broadly as population control as things get more and more desperate. I know it sucks to have to think that way, and lord knows I do not want to go all Alex Jones on you (never go full Alex Jones), but as the man once said "the best expect the worst".

For Further Reading:

* ACLU blog entry

* ACLU issues page