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For any who are unfamiliar with what a debtor prison is: "A debtors' prison is a prison for those who are unable to pay debt."

The US Supreme Court ruled against these types of imprisonments in Bearden v. Georgia, 461 U.S. 660 (1983): "A sentencing court cannot properly revoke a defendant's probation for failure to pay a fine and make restitution, absent evidence and findings that he was somehow responsible for the failure or that alternative forms of punishment were inadequate to meet the State's interest in punishment and deterrence, and hence here the trial court erred in automatically revoking petitioner's probation and turning the fine into a prison sentence without making such a determination."


However, it seems that, now, many states are circumventing this through other means to imprison people, essentially for being poor.

MSNBC discussed this the other day. I know Doros would be delighted that the "goals of the proletariat are meeting full", but what do you think of this?

I think it is an unacceptable practice designed to turn people into economic slaves.

A person who cannot pay a debt, who ends up in prison, will have less of a chance of successfully paying off that debt. In prison, you are not employed and do not receive a paycheck. Once the sentence is served, you now have a criminal record and may not be able to find a job. You once again end up in debt, and once again in prison.

All the while, if you do manage to get a job, they will keep sucking your paychecks to pay off your debt in increments, increasing your debt with fees to ensure you keep paying money. Even if you have payed the original debt, you cannot possibly pay all of the added late fees. You become a cow to be milked until its utter has dried up and its nipples are blistered pus bags.

Meanwhile, some of the prisons you might get sent to might be private prisons that get paid to house prisoners by the local government. You are in effect nothing more than cattle to be passed around from pen to pen never to be mercifully slaughtered.

I agree. In fact, NJ Governor, Chris Christie, is in trouble because of what's going on with his influence in privatizing some of NJ's prisons and halfway houses.

Private prisons are for-profit, and make money from the government for every prisoner within their system. It's one of the largest horrors of privatizing institutions that should never be privatized, such as Corrections in this case.

Although there are a lot of hardened criminals, a lot of the people in institutions made a bad mistake or helped the wrong friend. Using the system to make potentially good citizens into criminals is wrong. And thanks forgiving me another reason to stay in the South-east.

Actually, the states that have this in affect are:

CA
AZ
TX
LA
AL
FL
GA
NC
VA
PA
NY
OH
MI
IA
IL
MO

So about a third, almost half, of the states with this in effect are in the Southeast...

But not SC, go Gov. Haley. I don't know if I should ruin my first time voting with her on the ballet.

Thinking that California is the leader in using criminal punishment as a revenue source does not surprise me.

You know suprises me, Texas. Who, WHO, saw that coming, tell me WHO!.

Br3admax wrote:You know suprises me, Texas. Who, WHO, saw that coming, tell me WHO!.

Who didn't see it coming?

Dark Lord Cam wrote:

Br3admax wrote:You know suprises me, Texas. Who, WHO, saw that coming, tell me WHO!.

Who didn't see it coming?

i didn't jk

I consider it perfectly fair to charge a reasonable fee if the debt payment is a bit late. That person still has a chance to pay it off. But to increase the fee substantially, thereby making it impossible to pay, creates a cruel and unnecessary punishment. What I'm saying is, government agencies with fines to collect on will pass on their cases to collection agencies, who in turn charge more on, "business fees."

Say you get a speeding ticket. Alright, you broke the law and you should be punished. That is reasonable. You now owe the government 200 dollars. But say, you miss the due date by a day or two. Suddenly, your case gets handed to a non governmental agency who increases your debt with the justification of turning a profit and paying their employees and whatnot. How then, can you ever hope to pay your debt when $200 becomes $3000?

"If you can't pay your debts plus the fees, we'll throw you in jail, oh and you'll still have to pay when you get out."

How is that a fair and just practice? It is highly unethical. It is at its purest form, nothing but business. That person can't pay us all at once, so we must throw them in jail so that they have to pay us more! It's a huge profit to be made!

Then you factor in all of the business prisons that make money based on the number of prisoners they house. What happens? The Recidivism rate skyrockets as private groups work harder at putting you back into jail so they can keep making money off of you. You get thrown into jail alongside all of the Marijuana users, petty thieves, and other minor criminals who are also being taken advantage of.

Your debt grows, you have to pay it in ever increasing installments constantly or you go back to jail. However, you can't find a job, because you now have a criminal record, you can't pay your debts in full because you still have to eat/take care of your family or what have you, and suddenly you're forced to take loans to pay your debts, thereby increasing your debt.

That can happen to anyone isn't able to pay that $200 dollar fine.

Feel free to butt in if you feel my analysis of the problem goes too far or has something incorrect.

What? Is this the time I point out the real purpose behind the prison-industrial system? Or the time I point out that this isn't Wal*Mart or McDonalds or even Skyrim's development team throwing people in jail, but the state, the oh so benevolent overlords we're supposed to trust with our health insurance and retirement savings pyramid scams? Or maybe it's the time I point out that this is exactly the sort of crap that the monetary industry has always been doing- setting up cycles of debt in order to generate "free" money without having to face the eensy-little problem of having that money be accountable to any systems of real value, then screwing over borrowers before starting the cycle again with their children- and conclude with "REVOKE THE FEDERAL RESERVE, BRING BACK GOLD, VOTE RON PAUL"? Or maybe I could just say: show up in court next time, dingus. It's not that hard.

Really, I don't get what you want from me here.

Although on a related note, it's totally illegal to be poor in many areas of the country. And not in some abstract, rhetorical sense that means it isn't actually illegal, but may rather lead to certain completely tangential situations that some politicos with an axe to grind may choose to spin by alluding to semi-mythical Victorian debtors prisons (the source itself flat out admits "debtors" aren't being arrested for being debtors, but for "contempt of court", which has always been a jailable offense, debt or no), but in a literal, "be poor go to jail" sense. Don't believe me? Try sleeping out on a park bench. See what the cops do.

The only thing worse than the parasitic bourgeois are the idle lumpenproletariat!

OblivionDuruza wrote:The point of incarceration is as a deterrent and a means of rehabilitation. Imprisoning people costs a lot of money, so any state is not going to just slap any Joe Bloggs in irons without good cause. I'm not an expert in this particular scenario, but I would suppose that this threat of imprisonment is one sanction avaliable to judges, but not the only one. Essentially, discretion applies and while you can be incarcerated for not repaying a loan, that doesn't mean you will be.

It costs the state money to put people in jail. It does not cost businesses money to put people in jail. Private prisons make their money off of your tax dollars housing your fellow citizens in horrible, overcrowded conditions. It's one of the many reasons this country has such a huge prison population. Running a prison is a lucrative enterprise.

One of the big (only) reasons mary-j remains illegal--a pretext to stop and/or arrest anyone and potentially imprison them.

A similar law was in practice till '72 in Italy than it was revoked. Same goes for most of the European states. Still the bankruptcy of an enterprise is subject to investigation and persecution while the personal bankruptcy is now taken in judgement but not so severly punished, but still court is held in most cases.

Just for info, a person in a medium level prison costs the state an average of 95 Eurs per day. The more modern the prison the more it costs. This cost does not consider various social rehab programs or other activities.

Land of the free!
"You're jus' as free as you got jack to pay for it" - John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath.

House of the Wolf wrote:Actually, the states that have this in affect are:

CA
AZ
TX
LA
AL
FL
GA
NC
VA
PA
NY
OH
MI
IA
IL
MO

So about a third, almost half, of the states with this in effect are in the Southeast...

My, these letters mean a lot. >_>

ClottedCream wrote:

House of the Wolf wrote:Actually, the states that have this in affect are:

CA
AZ
TX
LA
AL
FL
GA
NC
VA
PA
NY
OH
MI
IA
IL
MO

So about a third, almost half, of the states with this in effect are in the Southeast...

My, these letters mean a lot. >_>

Get a map, mister, or miss negative.

I knew what all of those meant.

Here:

CA - California
AZ - Arizona
TX - Texas
LA - Louisiana
AL - Alabama
FL - Florida
GA- Georgia
NC - North Carolina
VA - Virginia
PA - Pennsylvania
NY - New York
OH - Ohio
MI - Michigan
IA - Iowa
IL - Illinois
MO - Missouri

Well that's much better.

I think I know all 50...

That makes you the most American person I have ever met.

No...that makes him unAmerican... Most Americans barely know the abbreviations of their own state, let alone the others'.