What is the difference between debtors prison and a court system that will rule on a debt, create a court order to pay, and then arrest you for not paying? It sounds like the same thing by another name.
https://www.themarshallproject.org/2015/02/24/debtors-prison...
It's a good programme, and worth a lsiten. (As are others in the series!)
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b05pqskm
> Are excessive traffic fines and debtors' jails fuelling community tensions in suburban Missouri? Claire Bolderson reports on a network of ninety separate cities in St Louis County, most of which have their own courts and police forces. Critics say that their size makes them financially unviable and allege that some of them boost their incomes by fining their own citizens and locking them up when they can't pay.
> This edition of Crossing Continents goes out and about in St Louis County to meet the people who say they are victims of a system which sees arrest warrants issued for relatively minor misdemeanours. Many of the victims are poor and black. The programme also takes us into the courts, and out onto the freeways with some of the County's police, who say they are upholding the law and promoting road safety.
> The US government is not so sure. One of the towns in question is Ferguson where riots erupted after a white police officer shot a young black man dead last summer. In a recent report on the riots, the Department of Justice concluded that the Ferguson police had been stopping people for no good reason. It said they were putting revenue before public safety.
> Claire Bolderson investigates how widespread the practice is and considers the impact on relations between citizens and the authorities that govern them.
http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/crime-and-courts/muni-cou...
I think the problems are deeper than how much of a municipal budget can come from fines though.
Also, I realize in this case he was just arrested and not imprisoned. I wasn't speaking to just this exact case.
The arrest wasn't for debt either, it was for ignoring a court order.
I guess if you don't think there should be any legal mechanism to address non payment of debts then courts shouldn't be involved, but refusing or otherwise failing to participate in the legal process is not the same thing as just failing to pay a debt.
The, as in specifying a specific arrest. As I said, I'm talking in general, not in this particular case.
People are getting dragged to court because they have failed to answer a court order, but they aren't getting dragged to court and then tossed in jail because they stopped paying their credit card or mortgage.
Which hey, those are some pretty shitty situations, but why aren't they appearing in court when ordered?
>Which hey, those are some pretty shitty situations, but why aren't they appearing in court when ordered?
Based on another post I made, it appears that it can happen because they aren't notified because the official process to notify them only goes so far and if they have an old address or some incorrect information, you may never receive the summons.
This comment mentions houses surviving bankruptcy in Florida:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11110139
(I think some exception is reasonable, but not a huge one)
And then on the other side of it people are being kept from working because they owe petty fines. It's obviously not just.
So people aren't put in jail for failing to follow court orders that require them to pay money? That goes against the numerous news reports I've read of that happening. Now, some portion of those jailed may have the means to pay and choose not to. I would guess a large portion falls into that group. But I am highly doubtful that it is 100%.
The court should have ordered the seizure of bank assets to cover the debt. In no way should owning money ever result in jail time, fines, judgements or otherwise.
> He says seven deputy US Marshals showed up at his home with guns and took him to federal court where he had to sign a payment plan for the 29-year-old school loan.
He was not taken to prison, he was arrested. These are wildly different actions. Nowhere in the article do the strings "prison", "jail", "gaol", "cell", "penitentiary" or any other synonym for prison appear.
There is plenty of discussion elsewhere in the HN comments on what may have led to this arrest.
> Aker said he was put in the back of a truck and placed in a cell at the federal building in downtown Houston.
> Aker told The News that he was ordered to pay $5,700 for the loan, including interest. However, Aker was also ordered to pay for the cost of the morning arrest — nearly $1,300.
> If he didn't pay that amount by March 1, he said, he was told he would be arrested again.
Wonder what will happen when he's arrested again when he can't come up with $7000 in two weeks.
I have made no statement about the propriety of the actions described in either article, merely observed that this is not a case of sending someone to prison over a debt.
He was certainly compelled to appear in court (at what is probably a great waste of taxpayer resources), but after that appearance, I don't see where he would be detained if he didn't agree to pay the debt.
Where in the article did you see that "choice" presented? All that he was compelled to do was show up in court and agree to a payment plan. He might still never pay the debt.
The court can compel you to appear court and explain yourself, but they can't throw you in jail for not paying.
All they compelled him to do was sign a payment plan (which he can and likely will ignore).
Now, as others have pointed out, the court is supposed to decide what you should be able to pay, and thus ideally you are never forced to pay more than you can afford. But the court does make errors and often people don't have equal access to help on the matters, and thus you can end up with people being required to pay more than they have access to. This can end up with them in jail, and thus we do have debtor prisons, even if they aren't quite as bad as debtor prisons of the past.
That's the thing: I have never heard of a single case where someone was imprisoned for not paying debts in the modern United States.
Instead of talking in the abstract, please provide a single citation of someone imprisoned for failing to pay back a loan.
However, being arrested for failing to appear in court or otherwise being in contempt of court would not qualify.
In this case a debt leads to a recurring pay or appear judgment that requires a monthly court appearance if payment cannot be made, and the arrest is made for failing the court appearance and not failing the payment. Close, but not exactly what I wanted.
https://www.themarshallproject.org/2015/02/24/debtors-prison...
In the opening, it is medical bill instead of loan and once again failure to appear, but given that the individual wasn't notified they had to appear it is once again pretty close. But later on it gives this line:
>or if the judge deems that the debtor is “willfully” not paying the debt, the judge may write a warrant for the debtor’s arrest on a charge of “contempt of court.”
So if the judge thinks the person can pay and they don't, they go to jail. It also brings up the 1983 case of Bearden v. Georgia which does allow imprisonment if the person is judged unwilling, but not unable, to pay. Do we assume the court is 100% perfect in these judgments?
>http://www.startribune.com/in-jail-for-being-in-debt/9569261...
Took a little searching because of all the websites focusing on debt resulting from anything criminal (I was purposefully not bringing up those results).
>In Illinois and southwest Indiana, some judges jail debtors for missing court-ordered debt payments. In extreme cases, people stay in jail until they raise a minimum payment. In January, a judge sentenced a Kenney, Ill., man "to indefinite incarceration" until he came up with $300 toward a lumber yard debt.
>In Minnesota, judges have issued arrest warrants for people who owe as little as $85
>Three debt buyers -- Unifund CCR Partners, Portfolio Recovery Associates Inc. and Debt Equities LLC -- accounted for 15 percent of all debt-related arrest warrants issued in Minnesota since 2005, court data show. The debt buyers also file tens of thousands of other collection actions in the state, seeking court orders to make people pay. The debts -- often five or six years old -- are purchased from companies like cellphone providers and credit card issuers, and cost a few cents on the dollar. Using automated dialing equipment and teams of lawyers, the debt-buyer firms try to collect the debt, plus interest and fees. A firm aims to collect at least twice what it paid for the debt to cover costs. Anything beyond that is profit.
All in all, it does seem the majority of cases I found were for failure to appear to a hearing (even though this could be caused by not being notified of a hearing or being required to repeatedly attend hearings and eventually missing one), but as the article points out that in a few places they don't even need that formality.
The fact remains that prison for debt is illegal in the United States and you are astronomically unlikely to ever end up arrested for debts (especially if you always respond to summons). It seems that in the rare cases where someone actually is arrested in connection with debt they are in for a day or two at most.
There are serious problems with law enforcement in this country (civil asset forfeiture, rampant abuse of power, etc.) but I don't think debtor's prisons are one of them. People aren't rotting away in jail for unpaid debts.