Court Fines and the Poor

Posted on February 11, 2015 by admin

• Civil rights attorneys sue Ferguson over ‘debtors prisons’, By Joseph Shapiro, February 8, 2015, National Public Radio: “In a new challenge to police practices in Ferguson, Mo., a group of civil rights lawyers is suing the city over the way people are jailed when they fail to pay fines for traffic tickets and other minor offenses. The lawsuit, filed Sunday night on the eve of the six-month anniversary of the police shooting of Michael Brown, alleges that the city violates the Constitution by jailing people without adequately considering whether they were indigent and, as a result, unable to pay. The suit is filed on behalf of 11 plaintiffs who say they were too poor to pay but were then jailed — sometimes for two weeks or more…”
• Does Ferguson run ‘debtor’s prison’? Lawsuit targets a source of unrest, By Harry Bruinius, February 9, 2015, Christian Science Monitor: “A lawsuit filed Sunday aims to correct one of the driving factors behind the racial unrest in Ferguson, Mo., last summer: a local court system that, critics say, systematically jailed people too poor to pay fines accumulated from traffic tickets or other minor infractions. A kind of 19th-century ‘debtor’s prison’ has been in place for years in Ferguson and nearby Jennings, Mo., say those who filed the lawsuit. The result, they add, is ‘a Dickensian system that flagrantly violates the basic constitutional and human rights of our community’s most vulnerable people.’ The lawsuit comes at a time when several states and cities – including Ferguson – are beginning to address the grievances laid bare last summer. Ferguson has just not gone far enough or fast enough, the lawsuit claims…”