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Corrupt Government Title: Prosecutors and Judges Have Brought Back Debtors’ Prisons One of the defining features of my work has been the loss of integrity in the justice system, not just because of separate tiers of accountability for the rich and powerful, but also because of the active collusion of the system in corrupt practices. An ACLU report on modern-day debtors prisons caught my eye because of its deep examination of the judiciarys active collaboration. Debtors prisons have been illegal in America since 1833. But that doesnt matter. We know about some ways people can languish in jail for being poorif they cannot pay bail, for example, or if they rack up fines related to imprisonment that must be paid upon release. The ACLU report scrutinizes an additional phenomenon: private debt collectors using courts and district attorneys to threaten incarceration as a means of profit. A staggering one in three Americans have a delinquent debt in the hands of a private collection agency, according to Consumer Financial Protection Bureau data. These debts are not largearound $1,300 on average. But debt collectors often hit up small-claims courts to obtain a judgment, filing hundreds of suits per day in some cases. Over 90 percent of these cases are decided for the collection agencies, mostly because they go uncontested. After winning, companies can garnish wages or seize property. They can also ask for judgment debtor examinations, a process where debtors are grilled about their financial histories to determine the final payment method. If the debtor doesnt show to the exam, companies can petition judges to issue arrest warrants. Judges can also issue arrest warrants to individuals who fail to comply with a court-ordered payment plan. The fact that the debtor never receives a notice of the lawsuit or of when to show up to court, or whether the debt is even real, is of little consequence. The ACLU examined over 1,000 cases in 26 states where judges dutifully issued the arrest warrants for failure to appear. In four states where they could receive full data (Maryland, Massachusetts, Nebraska, and Utah), the ACLU found 8,500 arrest warrants in debt-collection cases. The warrants cover every kind of debt: medical bills, student loans, rent payments, homeowners association fees, utility bills, repairs, payday loans, gym fees, you name it. The amounts involved in the warrants were as low as $28. Debtors typically dont know about the warrant until theyre pulled over for a traffic violation or officers enter their home or workplace. Debtors can sit in jail for weeks, all for not paying a bill. If they arrange bail, that money often goes directly to the debt-collection agency. Among dozens of stories is the case of Gordon Wheeler, a Texan whom US Marshals arrested at his home for failure to appear at a debtor exam in 2015. He was recovering from open-heart surgery and couldnt physically get to the hearing. The judgment concerned a $2,500 student loan debt from 1983, which with interest and fees was now $12,000. Wheeler didnt have the money, so he went to jail. Other debtors were arrested in front of their children; those hit with warrants included those with disabilities and a woman stricken with Alzheimers who died before she could be jailed. The report even found examples of people jailed for debts extinguished in bankruptcy, debts they didnt owe, or debts theyd already paid off. Specific debt collectors and specific judges specialize in issuing arrest warrants. A medical-debt collector in Idaho obtained 345 arrest warrants and jailed 222 debtors over a six-year period. Jared Kushners real-estate business obtained arrest warrants for 105 former tenants since 2013, resulting in 22 debtors going to jail. Hundreds of these arrest warrants can be rubber-stamped by judges in a single day. The value of the arrest warrant lies in the threat itself, providing a powerful spur to get people to pay, regardless of the validity of the debt. The ACLU documented scores of cases where individuals were specifically warned that they would go to jail if they didnt pay the debt, sometimes in written letters from the court. So the court system is actively participating in a kind of blackmail, dangling the prospect of an unconstitutional loss of freedom to extract cash. And of course these are traditionally the most vulnerable members of society, disproportionately black and brown, bearing the brunt of this perversion of the law. The impact doesnt just include a couple weeks in jail but lost wages, potential lost employment, scrambles for childcare, the burden of a criminal record, and the psychological stress and humiliation of being locked up for being poor. Sometimes local prosecutors are enlisted in this game. District attorneys have jurisdiction over bounced checks, which they are supposed to review for violations of state law. Over 200 DA offices contract with private companies specializing in bad checks like Bounceback or National Corrective Group to handle the cases. The debt collectors, using the prosecutors seal and signature, send repayment demand letters, threatening criminal charges and prison time if the bad-check writers dont pay up. The ACLU estimates that over 1 million such letters go out every year. Some of these bounced checks are for as low as $2, which would never trigger a criminal prosecution, and the DA has usually not reviewed the cases for criminal implications. So these companies are just using an official-looking letter and an empty threat to coerce payment. That doesnt mean just payment for the unpaid check but a series of fees, as well as mandatory attendance in a diversion program run by the same debt collectors, which costs upward of $200, often more than the bad check itself. Per the contracts, the DA offices get a kickback on those fees, which enables the cycle. One documented case in California showed that someone who inadvertently bounced a check for $3.87 for groceries ultimately paid $444.87 in fees and restitution. The ACLU argues that these practices violate human-rights conventions prohibiting arbitrary detention. It recommends a ban on arrest warrants in debt-collection cases, protections for debtors in post-judgment hearings, and the termination of contracts between DA offices and private debt collectors. But what really infuriates me is the role of judges and prosecutors, without whom this entire game would fall apart. Chosen to uphold the law, they have decided to destroy it, joining with some of the sketchiest operators in the country to facilitate the use of their courts and jails for blackmail. In the case of the bad-check letters, prosecutors have effectively sold their office for a few bucks, an unconscionable breach of ethics. Observers of horrible debt-collection tactics famously talk about Unicredit, a Pennsylvania company that decorated its office to look like a courtroom and held fake court proceedings to intimidate debtors into payment. But why go through that trouble when you can get the real courts to do you a solid? We banned debtors prisons because we considered it immoral to punish someone for a lack of money. But now immorality is reserved for the judges and prosecutors facilitating the reemergence of the criminalization of the poor. Post Comment Private Reply Ignore Thread Top Page Up Full Thread Page Down Bottom/Latest Begin Trace Mode for Comment # 24.
#1. To: Tooconservative, sneakypete (#0)
Well, capitalism is about profit, justice is for Commies. Right, Pete?
Nice way to open a thread by trolling someone based on personal frictions from other threads. Did you have any actual comment? The thrust of the article, since you probably didn't read it as you rushed to try to troll pete, is that debtor's prisons have made an unofficial comeback in the States and relatively few people know about it. This is a form of abuse comparable to the corrupt civil asset forfeiture racket by the feds and the states.
Communists turned entire nations into debtors prisons. You not only owed the state money,you owed them your life,your land,and your family.
Not to quibble too much but it was worse than just owing them. You didn't owe them, strictly speaking. The state owned you along with every means of production, all land/plants/animals and you possessed no right to protest or resist. That was considered counter-revolutionary, you would be killed or punished severely. The sheer horror of communist totalitarianism is almost more than the ordinary American can imagine.
Not true. You don't know what you are talking about. One thing I can agree, in most cases American prison is much more comfortable that a Soviet concentration camp in 1930s. It is enough to compare descriptions by Solzhenitsyn with American prison experiences. Regular life in both systems could be tough. But standard of life in USA was higher than in the Soviet block, on the other hand in many market economies was lower.
You're wrong. The real horror of communism and Nazism is that the state did own you, completely and utterly. Even if you belonged to the favored political class. Take one step out of line and you'd be in a concentration camp, a gulag, or a "psychiatric hospital". There is an old argument on the Right that Stalin and FDR were competing to build a successful and sustainable communist system. They argue that FDR won and Stalin lost. I think the argument goes too far, even if I don't like FDR.
Yeah, you know better how Poland under Communism looked like, than a person that was born there, went to school and university, etc ... You must be some f***ing genius. He, he.
Yeah,I do. I knew some Poles who escaped from there and joined the US Army in the hope they would get to go back there to kill all the leaders and make Poland free. They were as serious as a heart attack about it,too. ou must be some f***ing genius. He, he. Yeah,I am,but that has nothing to do about it. Anybody but a blind fool could see that before the USSR collapsed and Poland became free. If Communism was as slick as the duck's ass in Poland,Comrade,PLEASE splain to all of us why now that they are free to choose what form of government they have,the Polish are no longer communists.
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