The Town That Turned Poverty Into a Prison Sentence
thenation.com
thenation.com
There's nothing new about breaking the law and going to jail when you can't pay the fines. You'll typically sit in jail at a given rate until the debt is paid (for example, $50/day, and there's multipliers for working while in jail)
The problem with your suggestion (deterrence to "encourage" others to pay up faster), these folks can't pay up faster. You ever been to one of these small towns? There's no money, a several hundred dollar fine is a month or more of labor for the ones that have a job. They have to forgo food, insurance, electricity, water or some other essential in order to pay off these debts. You want them to pay faster? Get rid of the fucking speed traps and corrupt officials that screw them.
Ref: http://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/461/660/case.html
[1] From my recollection of Disposable People: https://www.freetheslaves.net/sslpage.aspx?pid=348
Yes, it is. And contrary to the assertion of the article, this sort of thing happens pretty much in every town in the US.
If you owe the court money and you don't pay ... you'll be thrown in jail. Can't pay the fine? Jail. Behind on your alimony payments? Jail. The government always gets paid.
The worst part is that the people who get caught up in this are not exactly model citizens. Not exactly a clear case for sympathy.
Regardless, debtor prisons are barbaric, period.
That's assuming the court is obligated to evaluate the person's ability to pay. A person could be in the system for months or years before the court conducts an evaluation.
There have been numerous cases of actors whose child support obligations were set at the peak of their career and yet the CSA still expects them to be making the same money.
Are you saying you fail to sympathize with them because those people are poor?
The U.S. have a reputation of giving everyone the same chance to make their own fortune, regardless of status. When you're thrown into prison, unable to pay back the debt that got you there in the first place, this is like the opposite of that reputation. There's no way out.
Whatever happened to "Give me your tired, your poor?"
These people aren't in trouble because they're poor.
They're in trouble because they're criminals, mentally unstable, deadbeat dads, lazy, or just plain stupid.
They're the worst we have to offer as a society. Because they're the worst, it's very difficult to sympathize with them.
That said, debtor prisons are barbaric and they're barbaric even when applied to the worst elements. Even though these people are scum, they should not be treated this way!
That would solve virtually all of this.
In this case I think it's mostly due to different local vs. state incentives. At the local level, if you happen to live in a 750-person municipality along a freeway, ticketing people aggressively is popular, because it raises money for the municipality, mostly from outsiders passing through. But if Austin takes control of ticketing revenues, it gets much less popular: the average Texan does not want aggressive ticketing on the West Texas interstates.
I hope some smarter reader comes here and says this article isn't an accurate representation of the truth, because as it stands now I almost am not able to take it.
These kinds of practices don't require local municipalities to be full of bad actors, but desperate ones. The private firms, on the other hand....
There's no particular reason why it should have been front page material -- just the time of day it was submitted and the provocative title helped, I guess. I found it interesting and am a longform journalism fan. I thought others on HN might find it interesting so I submitted it. I have no particular political agenda [1] and don't necessarily agree with all the content of this piece, but it made me think about a challenging subject and seemed like it could launch an interesting discussion.
Sorry it's not your cup of tea, just trying to add some variety to the HN submissions.
[1] The only other longform piece I've submitted -- A Death at Tough Mudder -- is about the circumstances surrounding a participant's death at a spartan race. I don't read longform to pat myself on the back when I find articles I agree with. I read it to take a break from all things tech related and to learn about new things.
I think that a lot of people never bother to checkout the "newest" page to vote on stories that they want to see. If there are a lot of people who agree with you and they put in some effort to promote stories that are interesting, then perhaps you can effect some change.
I myself posted a link about SpaceX delaying their latest launch, that was scheduled to happen in a few hours.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7498494
Not a single upvote! Personally, this suggests to me that no one is actually visiting the "newest" stories as it is something I would have thought would merit at least one upvote!
The article started off with the theme in the title: she can't pay the fine for a traffic ticket. This would be pretty damning if you needed to drive to get to work. But she hasn't worked in a decade. Presumably because of injuries from a car wreck.
Then she's driving without a license. I'm sorry, but you can't thumb your nose at the law like this. You don't have the right to drive around unlicensed. She's on disability, she doesn't have a job to drive to, nor the income to pay the fine ... so she must adapt her life to live without a license: walk to the store, ride with someone else to go to further places. Anyway, the story goes on from there about how she can't afford to pay the fines and the fees and ...
I'd like more information before I can really make judgement about this person. What are the details of this 1997 (did I math that correctly?) car wreck? Is she at fault? Were there any settlements involved? What kind of injury does she have that keeps her from working? Can she learn to do something that doesn't affect her disability? Specifically, what injury prevents her working but allows her to drive?
I get that the world is unfair to the poor. I know that these collection systems for fines with private companies involved are abhorrent. I understand that a societal shift is needed to help with many lives that are so much less than ideal. What I don't understand is how, when someone makes a colossal mistake (especially one that we've all been educated about), anyone else would blame everyone but the mistaken.
For me, this whole story hinged on that one time she got caught driving without a license: there's no reason she should have been unaware of the consequences.
I got rear-ended recently by a driver who ran off the 'crime scene'. He was probably uninsured, but we'll never know since I didn't catch his license plate. I just bought a brand new car and damage was substantial. I ended up taking the hit. I'm not poor, but I ain't rich either. Driving uninsured (and without license!) means you're screwing other people for being in a shitty situation.
Did you read the article? Do you understand the difference between not being poor and able to pay your bills and then being poor and not able to pay the bills?
I'm an advocate for basic income, but I can still call bullshit in the status quo.
I have CF, and I can't tell you how many people have told me I should get on disability instead of being being a developer. As if work is a penalty in life, and anyone who can get out of it should.
For example, many physical conditions vary from day to day - one day she may be well enough to drive, the next she will have to rest in bed. Then there are the millions with mental disabilities who may even function perfectly well most of the time except for the days they try to kill themselves. Sure they 'could' work, but no employer would ever take them on, so they must live on disability.
Consequences such as, "People wound up in jail for months without ever seeing a judge."
Do you expect these kinds of consequences in the United States?
The lady in this case may have fared slightly better, with her time in jail coming in at seven weeks: "Ford spent seven weeks in jail, during which time her debt grew into the thousands. She did not, however, see the inside of a courtroom."
My opinion on the "debtor's prison" subject is that non-payment of fines should never result in jail time. Other punishments perhaps (revocation of license, liens against property, etc), but never jail time. Nor should interest and penalties be permitted to eternally inflate those original fines. And the privatization angle ... these companies need to be heavily regulated. I could go on and on about that one...
In fact, while scrambling to get the money, she's going to be forced to make the decision often between driving and hoping she doesn't get caught, or not paying her fee and going to jail.
It's amazing that someone could read this horrible tale and can only see how it affects themselves. How much oppressive klepto-state will you support to prevent the slightest chance that the situation of the poor might affect you and yours?
We with wealth don't like it when radical wealth imbalance affects our lifestyles. We like to pretend that we earned our wealth purely through honest, good, hard work, and that everyone can be where we are if they just try. We also like to pretend that everyone gets equal treatment under the law, so why not subject that person to the same treatment I would be subject to?
We live in a truly wonderful country.
Punish her to make sure that she does not repeats the same mistake again, which is what a lot of places in America do daily, without anyone needing to write an article about it.
Why are you trying to judge the person? This whole article is about many more people than just her, but also specifically about the problems presented by private probation companies as a whole.
What I don't understand is how, when someone makes a colossal mistake (especially one that we've all been educated about), anyone else would blame everyone but the mistaken.
Was there any statement that she should not have been fined? Was there a cry that the legal system was unjust for pulling over people driving without a license? This is a story about people being taken advantage of. I saw no claims they were entirely innocent, just that they were put into a system that exacted much more punishment that they were likely due, and most likely legally due.
For me, this whole story hinged on that one time she got caught driving without a license: there's no reason she should have been unaware of the consequences.
For you, this whole story, about multiple people, officials, and cities, including the death of some individuals while they were incarcerated for failure to pay a fine, hinges on single person's single traffic stop and whether she was aware of the consequences? Which consequences would those be, the ones where she is supposes to pay a fine, or the ones where she goes to jail because she is incapable of paying that fine and stays there for over 100 days without seeing a judge?