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The Town That Turned Poverty Into a Prison Sentence

91 points by mcphilip 13y ago

az0xff 13y ago
This is revealing and utterly heart-wrenching. It's sad to hear that things like this exist in countries as wealthy as the United States. 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.
- HillRat 13y ago
  It happens more often than most of us, privileged as we are, think. The legality of an action isn't determined by law (black letter or case), but by law plus petition. The poorest and weakest members of society generally don't have the financial wherewithal to effectively see court challenges through, and public-minded legal groups only have so many lawyers and so much bandwidth. 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....
smutticus 13y ago
I hate the over use of the term Dickensian to describe modern social conditions, but this is pretty much it. When you reinstitute debtor's prisons, you're essentially reinstating an institution and its associated societal cruft desribed in such novels as Oliver Twist. It's a massive step backwards for American society, and quite frankly, utterly disgraceful.
- bdcravens 13y ago
  I thought "debtor's prisons" referred to being locked up for private debt, not fines and fees owed the government. 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)
  - _delirium 13y ago
    For regular debt owed the government you can't usually be jailed, if it's not as a result of fraud: the IRS can try various ways to coerce you into paying, but they cannot jail you for an outstanding debt that you really can't pay. Instead they resort to negotiating repayment plans, garnishing wages, etc.
  - cesarbs 13y ago
    The funny thing is that when someone is locked up for not paying their debt, the government very likely ends up having spent more money doing that than just leaving that debt alone.
    - gatehouse 13y ago
      Unless it has a deterrence effect and makes people pay faster in the future.
      - Jtsummers 13y ago
        Because we all know that deterrence is so effective. We should put a jaywalker in the stockades in the town square every day as a warning to the other pedestrians out there. 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.
        gatehouse 13y ago
        I responded to an unfounded assertion with an unfounded assertion, it wasn't a suggestion. The point I was very obliquely trying to make is that if you choose policy based on consequences, you don't control the universe so you might not like the results. I agree that the best course of action would be to demolish the parasitic government, but for moral reasons, not to achieve specific consequences.
mcphilip 13y ago
FYI, this was a recent submission to longform.org. If you like longform journalism on a wide variety of topics, that site is highly recommended.
ars 13y ago
The simple solution is that all fines must be forwarded to the State and absolutely none kept locally. (Including everything, even fees, everything.) That would solve virtually all of this.
- maxcan 13y ago
  it would mitigate it but then you'd get the states pressuring the municipalities to jack up the fines. probably better than the current situation but not a panacea
  - _delirium 13y ago
    In some cases that would be true. But in a number of cases I think there's a fairly particularized local bad incentive that gets mitigated at the state level via dilution (and also looks worse, if anyone has to look at it). Texas did something like this with traffic fines. Due to extensive abuse of small municipalities who were trying to extract windfall profits from the fact that they happened to be located along an interstate in Middle-of-Nowhere, West Texas, the state did the state version of "nationalizing" to the revenue from traffic tickets: changed the law so all ticket revenue gets sent to Austin. This has mostly solved the problem: these small municipalities no longer have the incentive to ticket a bunch of people. 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.
- Barraketh 13y ago
  I could not agree with this more. If there was one law I would pass it would be this - any fines / fees / property seizures get passed on to the state, and ideally distributed evenly amongst the people of the state. The police should not be a funding mechanism.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
delinka 13y ago
"He asked to see her license. [She] didn't have one." 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.
- tinbad 13y ago
  This, this and a hundred times this. I'm sick of being pushed into feeling sorry for people in a shitty situation, for whatever reason but mostly for being bad at making (life) decisions. 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.
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
faddotio 13y ago
I'm utterly shocked that this happened in a Southern state.
mdesq 13y ago
Why is this the top story on HN, let alone on the front page?
- zizee 13y ago
  Because it was voted there. If you want different sorts of stories checkout https://news.ycombinator.com/newest https://news.ycombinator.com/newest and vote for the ones that you want.
  - mdesq 13y ago
    I obviously wasn't asking for the pedantic, condescending answer, so how is this an acceptable answer? Downvote me all you like; I was asking a legitimate question about how this fits the HN newsworthy criteria. "Off-Topic: Most stories about politics..." I realize there'a lot of patting ourselves on the back here that we're not as backwards as some random person/place, but it's not why I came to HN.
    - Jtsummers 13y ago
      It's not the pedantic answer, it's the answer. The content doesn't get here without up votes. So other people disagree with you on its relevance, or you and others that consider it irrelevant aren't doing your job and flagging it. In nearly every thread either clearly political or tangentially political someone like you asks this question. Just flag it and be done with it.
    - martey 13y ago
      From the same FAQ you quoted: "Please don't submit comments complaining that a submission is inappropriate for the site."
    - mcphilip 13y ago
      I submitted this story. 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.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
pbiggar 13y ago
Wow. This is actually modern day slavery, exactly as implemented in countries like Pakistan and India[1]: you owe a debt, and you are held in servitude until you pay it back, while racking up new bills the entire time you're there. [1] From my recollection of Disposable People: https://www.freetheslaves.net/sslpage.aspx?pid=348 https://www.freetheslaves.net/sslpage.aspx?pid=348
- maratd 13y ago
  > This is actually modern day slavery 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.
  - HillRat 13y ago
    Following the rulings in Tate and Bearden, the state cannot imprison a defendant who has been convicted of a crime that has a sentence of a fine and is legitimately unable to pay. To do otherwise would allow the conversion of a sentence from fine to imprisonment based entirely on the financial status of the offender. However, if the court determines an offender can pay and is refusing to, then all bets are off.
    - Xdes 13y ago
      >the state cannot imprison a defendant who has been convicted of a crime that has a sentence of a fine and is legitimately unable to pay. 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.
    - Perdition 13y ago
      The issue with child support is that the state child support agencies often rely on bureau of labor figures to determine what someone with a particular job "should" be making, and don't consider variance in wages or cost of living when levying child support rates. So while the payments might be reasonable according to some bureaucrats rule book, they aren't reasonable in the real world (a common issue is men with large child support obligations wanting to start another family). 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.

91 points by mcphilip 13y ago

This is revealing and utterly heart-wrenching. It's sad to hear that things like this exist in countries as wealthy as the United States. 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.

HillRat 13y ago
It happens more often than most of us, privileged as we are, think. The legality of an action isn't determined by law (black letter or case), but by law plus petition. The poorest and weakest members of society generally don't have the financial wherewithal to effectively see court challenges through, and public-minded legal groups only have so many lawyers and so much bandwidth. 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....

smutticus 13y ago

I hate the over use of the term Dickensian to describe modern social conditions, but this is pretty much it. When you reinstitute debtor's prisons, you're essentially reinstating an institution and its associated societal cruft desribed in such novels as Oliver Twist. It's a massive step backwards for American society, and quite frankly, utterly disgraceful.

bdcravens 13y ago
I thought "debtor's prisons" referred to being locked up for private debt, not fines and fees owed the government. 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)
- _delirium 13y ago
  For regular debt owed the government you can't usually be jailed, if it's not as a result of fraud: the IRS can try various ways to coerce you into paying, but they cannot jail you for an outstanding debt that you really can't pay. Instead they resort to negotiating repayment plans, garnishing wages, etc.
- cesarbs 13y ago
  The funny thing is that when someone is locked up for not paying their debt, the government very likely ends up having spent more money doing that than just leaving that debt alone.
  - gatehouse 13y ago
    Unless it has a deterrence effect and makes people pay faster in the future.
    - Jtsummers 13y ago
      Because we all know that deterrence is so effective. We should put a jaywalker in the stockades in the town square every day as a warning to the other pedestrians out there. 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.
      - gatehouse 13y ago
        I responded to an unfounded assertion with an unfounded assertion, it wasn't a suggestion. The point I was very obliquely trying to make is that if you choose policy based on consequences, you don't control the universe so you might not like the results. I agree that the best course of action would be to demolish the parasitic government, but for moral reasons, not to achieve specific consequences.

mcphilip 13y ago

FYI, this was a recent submission to longform.org. If you like longform journalism on a wide variety of topics, that site is highly recommended.

ars 13y ago

The simple solution is that all fines must be forwarded to the State and absolutely none kept locally. (Including everything, even fees, everything.) That would solve virtually all of this.

maxcan 13y ago
it would mitigate it but then you'd get the states pressuring the municipalities to jack up the fines. probably better than the current situation but not a panacea
- _delirium 13y ago
  In some cases that would be true. But in a number of cases I think there's a fairly particularized local bad incentive that gets mitigated at the state level via dilution (and also looks worse, if anyone has to look at it). Texas did something like this with traffic fines. Due to extensive abuse of small municipalities who were trying to extract windfall profits from the fact that they happened to be located along an interstate in Middle-of-Nowhere, West Texas, the state did the state version of "nationalizing" to the revenue from traffic tickets: changed the law so all ticket revenue gets sent to Austin. This has mostly solved the problem: these small municipalities no longer have the incentive to ticket a bunch of people. 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.
Barraketh 13y ago
I could not agree with this more. If there was one law I would pass it would be this - any fines / fees / property seizures get passed on to the state, and ideally distributed evenly amongst the people of the state. The police should not be a funding mechanism.

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

delinka 13y ago

"He asked to see her license. [She] didn't have one." 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.

tinbad 13y ago
This, this and a hundred times this. I'm sick of being pushed into feeling sorry for people in a shitty situation, for whatever reason but mostly for being bad at making (life) decisions. 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.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]

faddotio 13y ago

I'm utterly shocked that this happened in a Southern state.

mdesq 13y ago

Why is this the top story on HN, let alone on the front page?

zizee 13y ago
Because it was voted there. If you want different sorts of stories checkout https://news.ycombinator.com/newest https://news.ycombinator.com/newest and vote for the ones that you want.
- mdesq 13y ago
  I obviously wasn't asking for the pedantic, condescending answer, so how is this an acceptable answer? Downvote me all you like; I was asking a legitimate question about how this fits the HN newsworthy criteria. "Off-Topic: Most stories about politics..." I realize there'a lot of patting ourselves on the back here that we're not as backwards as some random person/place, but it's not why I came to HN.
  - Jtsummers 13y ago
    It's not the pedantic answer, it's the answer. The content doesn't get here without up votes. So other people disagree with you on its relevance, or you and others that consider it irrelevant aren't doing your job and flagging it. In nearly every thread either clearly political or tangentially political someone like you asks this question. Just flag it and be done with it.
  - martey 13y ago
    From the same FAQ you quoted: "Please don't submit comments complaining that a submission is inappropriate for the site."
  - mcphilip 13y ago
    I submitted this story. 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.

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

deleted 13y ago
[deleted]

pbiggar 13y ago

Wow. This is actually modern day slavery, exactly as implemented in countries like Pakistan and India[1]: you owe a debt, and you are held in servitude until you pay it back, while racking up new bills the entire time you're there. [1] From my recollection of Disposable People: https://www.freetheslaves.net/sslpage.aspx?pid=348 https://www.freetheslaves.net/sslpage.aspx?pid=348

maratd 13y ago
> This is actually modern day slavery 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.
- HillRat 13y ago
  Following the rulings in Tate and Bearden, the state cannot imprison a defendant who has been convicted of a crime that has a sentence of a fine and is legitimately unable to pay. To do otherwise would allow the conversion of a sentence from fine to imprisonment based entirely on the financial status of the offender. However, if the court determines an offender can pay and is refusing to, then all bets are off.
  - Xdes 13y ago
    >the state cannot imprison a defendant who has been convicted of a crime that has a sentence of a fine and is legitimately unable to pay. 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.
  - Perdition 13y ago
    The issue with child support is that the state child support agencies often rely on bureau of labor figures to determine what someone with a particular job "should" be making, and don't consider variance in wages or cost of living when levying child support rates. So while the payments might be reasonable according to some bureaucrats rule book, they aren't reasonable in the real world (a common issue is men with large child support obligations wanting to start another family). 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.