Where the debt comes from matters why exactly?
The prison should be for one purpose only: to make society safer. If someone is dangerous enough to be in prison, they should not be out regardless of whether they owe money or not.
In other words, if you can't buy your way out of prison, a debt should not bring you into one.
No. The meaning of words matters. Words, used precisely, are how people with different values and beliefs can communicate and reach agreements in a functioning society. When journalists, who are supposed to inform and educate the public, twist the meaning of words in order to make a point, that’s wrong.
> Where the debt comes from matters why exactly?
Because a debt arising from a criminal conviction requires the convicted person to have engaged in a wrongful act in the first place. Mere failure to pay a civil debt does not.
> The prison should be for one purpose only: to make society safer
Views about the proper role of prisons vary widely. Most people believe that prisons are for punishing people for doing bad things. Note that by your reasoning, many people who do very bad things should not be imprisoned because there is no risk of recidivism. Women who murder their abusive husbands, for example, are almost never going to go and murder someone else. By your reasoning, they shouldn’t go to prison to punish them for their murder.
That's a reasonable position to take, actually. Depends on the level of abuse, I'd say. https://www.cnn.com/2019/06/07/europe/uk-sally-challen-intl-...
It may be true that the deterrent is justifiable because it's also a legitimate form of punishment (for instance, saying "If anyone kills their spouse this year, I'll skin this puppy alive" might be a deterrent, but it's probably unjust), but it's not acting as punishment alone.
Besides desperation, there's also passion and mental instability. There's enough cases where you might just not be thinking about the potential punishment at all when committing a crime, meaning it doesn't deter you. For mental instability, we as a society have mostly decided we're okay with reducing/eliminating punishment (and perhaps that you should be institutionalized instead); for passion we generally haven't decided that, except perhaps with the concept of "temporary insanity."
A punishment fails as a deterrent if:
+ it is not expected + it is not understood + it is not net negative
The first, not expected, fits when; one believes their actions are legal and then they are found not to be (correctly or incorrectly); one expects a different punishment to the one given, and the expected punishment was not a deterrent (often seen in fraud cases).
The second, not understood, fits when one expects the punishment but failed to understand its impact on them. For example, those incarcerated may misunderstand the lasting trauma of loss of privacy, agency, and family.
The third, not a net negative applies in cases where the punishment is deemed an acceptable risk or cost, or even desirable. Desirable has repeatedly been the case for the extremely impoverished or ill. Acceptable cost is seen in many corporate dealings, but mainly speeding and parking tickets for the individual. Acceptable risk is even more the corporate case (legal departments evaluate legal risk constantly) but is also the case for career criminals and moonshot criminals.
> + it is not expected + it is not understood + it is not net negative
Also if it is not expected to be avoided if the behavior sought to be deterred is avoided. The perception that a punishment is applied arbitrarily or with prejudice on grounds other than the behavior notionally justifying it defeats its value as deterrent as surely as a lack of perception that it will be applied if the behavior occurs.
Witness Vinod Khosla and his battles: he has expected fines, understands them (though disagrees), and the net negative is (in his case) so trivial as to be negligible.
"Oh, you want to fine me $10,000/day? Well, go for it. By the end of my life that might amount to 3% of my net worth".
Sure, and (unless wikipedia is lying) the words "debtor's prison" have for centuries included the imprisonment of people unable to pay court-ordered judgments, as well as private debts. Per that definition, the article's usage is correct.
(You can certainly make the argument that the situation described in the article doesn't meet the specific "contractual obligation" language in the EuCHR's definition, but that has nothing to do with your claim that the article is misleading people.)
This whole line of argument about the use of the term debtors' prison not being accurate because of the circumstances of this one individual, as if her situation were the only being considered is so useless. Stop trying to detail the focus with the distraction. She was one example. People are thrown into those prisons (and simply indebtedness in general in other states) simply for being unable to pay arbitrary fines and fees. That she also got sent to that prison for a debt does not make it no longer a debtors' prison,
The prohibition on excessive fines has it's roots in the Magna Carta. (quoting from the Timbs vs. Indiana Supreme Court decision) "...Magna Carta required that economic sanctions "be proportioned to the wrong" and "not be so large as to deprive [an offender] of his livelihood."
Yes, correct, thanks for setting out that argument. The organization Survived and Punished advocates for exactly this, because the argument you're making is sound: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survived_and_Punished https://survivedandpunished.org/
You're correct in that words do matter but entirely incorrect in your position, this is a debtors prison, it's literally in the name...
> Wiki: "A debtors' prison is a prison for people who are unable to pay debt."
Also starting a reply with "No" makes you seem like an asshole and invalidates much of your credibility and people's desire to hear you out. The GP had a well reasoned (and correct) response to your original comment but you proceeded to devalue it with 2 letters.
Since he followed that "No" with several paragraphs, that's a moot point (not to mention much ruder that his reply, what with "makes you look like an asshole" and stuff).
And, no, "no" is not something that makes people look like assholes. It's just an expression of opinion -- whether accompanied by a justification/arguments or not. Even on its own, that is, without further arguments, it's still useful as a kind of "poll" (how many commenters agree or disagree with a thesis).
At worse, it's curt.
A society that puts people in jail for not having $13000 to pay is not a "functioning society".
>Because a debt arising from a criminal conviction requires the convicted person to have engaged in a wrongful act in the first place. Mere failure to pay a civil debt does not.
If the convicted should go to jail, they should go to jail from a conviction for the wrongful act itself -- not for not being able to pay the debt created by it.
Debtors prisons don't make sense for normal debts, but a fine for embezzlement is not the same thing at all. The $13,000 isn't really a debt as much as it is a punishment. The real question is whether the corrections system passed up an effective opportunity to garnish normal wages - but I can imagine a lot of practical issues with that approach.
I've little doubt the situation in Mississippi is dodgy, but these aren't debtors prisons. These are strange ordinary prisons.
EDIT Hah, nevermind turns out I didn't know what a debtors prison was. Thanks fenomas.
If you refuse; the assets should be seized from you and the fine paid that way.
If you are unable to, then the fine is, ipso facto, excessive.
In either case penal slavery is not an appropriate answer.
A criminal fine that it is impossible to pay with the person's actual means without impairing access to the basic necessities of life when the fine is imposed (including reasonably anticipated future income if the required mechanism of repayment allows it to be paid over time from future income), and no matter whether it is characterized as restitution or otherwise, no matter how it relates to past criminal gains, is excessive, and penal slavery (whether or not permitted by the 13th Amendment, which sets the bounds of what is legal but not what is moral) for inability to pay such an excessive fine compounds the injustice with gross violation of the most fundamental of human rights, and even more incarceration without penal slavery for inability (as opposed to refusal and obstruction when the means we're available) to pay would be piling injustice upon injustice.
No, there's forfeiture for that.
Explain again, how that is the article's fault, "deceiving us" into feeling a "restitution center" is a "debtor's prison".
There are people there who have crimes other than/as well as financial obligations. But there are also those who solely have the financial side.
Your argument is that because it's not a "civil debtor's prison", it doesn't count. But that's you inserting that qualifier. Historically, debtor's prisons were used both criminally and civilly.
And the line between civil and criminal is often drawn in a peculiar way: Repeat copyright violation enough and somehow it's criminal not civil, but systematically fail to pay artists their royalties it remains civil forever. Embezzling $1000 is criminal, keeping $1000 out of an employee paycheck is a civil.