Which statement is true:
(A) The criminal justice system exists to deter unlawful activity, protect the public, and rehabilitate people with criminal convictions.
(B) Courts have become tools to generate revenue for the government. This undermines the integrity of our criminal justice system.
(C) The court system of never ending fines, fees, interest, arrests for failure to appear, failure to pay, suspended driver’s licenses, barriers to employment, and sitting in jail to work off your costs have entrapped an entire class of our society in a never ending battle to survive economically. Many of the impoverished, low income class have dug a hole so deep in the court system they can never hope to climb out.
And the surrounding argument has nothing to do with race even though there are plenty of race counters out there who will perpetuate the never-ending Jim Crow, extension of slavery arguments. Not so; this is purely an economic issue.
If you are poor, this topic applies to you. In 2018 Alabama, that means with a family of 4 if your household income was less than $25,100 you are below the federal guidelines for the poverty level.
As of today, money is still green, and remains race and gender neutral. That is as long as Congress does not take the color of money under advisement, then who knows?
So which statement above is true.
Here are some more facts to help you decide. Read on.
How Cities Make Money by Fining the Poor
In a recent comprehensive article by the New York Times writer Matthew Shaer spent time in Corinth, Mississippi and found that many Judges are locking up defendants who can’t pay, sometimes for months at a time. In his article Shaer detailed personal stories of the arrests and incarceration of several local defendants, all of low-income and economic hardship cases.
In 2017, Micah West and Sara Wood of Montgomery, Alabama’s Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) drove to Corinth to open an investigation into the Municipal Court, with an eye toward later filing a lawsuit — the most effective way, they believed, to halt Judge John C. Ross’s jailing of low-income defendants.
In early December 2017, the SPLC and the MacArthur Justice Center filed their lawsuit against Corinth. That same month, the city ordered the jail emptied of all inmates incarcerated for nonpayment of fines. “There was no explanation,” says Brian Howell, one of the lawsuit’s plaintiffs, who was then incarcerated, sitting out $1,250 in fines and court costs for three unpaid traffic tickets. “It was just, ‘All right, get up and go.’ ”
After lobbying by the S.P.L.C. and the A.C.L.U. (American Civil Liberties Union), both houses of the State Legislature unanimously passed a bill prohibiting any resident from being jailed for a failure to pay either court costs or fines. The bill went into effect in July of last year.
According to Shaer’s reporting:
But the modest progress in Mississippi has not necessarily been mirrored in other states — in recent months, attorneys in Arkansas and Pennsylvania have filed lawsuits accusing a judge and the Commonwealth of facilitating “debtors’ prisons,” and in Missouri, Ferguson officials are still fighting a class-action suit first filed in 2015. In the few places where one aspect of the fines-and-fees apparatus has been eliminated, that does not mean poor residents are suddenly free of towering amounts of criminal-justice debt. Nor does it mean they will not continue to come in regular contact with law enforcement, which remains robustly subsidized even as other city services go underfunded.
Kenneth Lindsey, (one of the Corinth defendants) for example, was arrested last spring for missing a hearing related to unpaid fines. The judge at the Alcorn County Justice Court sent him to jail for 12 days when he couldn’t pay.
Poor People in Alabama Continue to be Jailed Because They Cannot Pay Fines
According to Alabama’s Equal Justice Initiative:
Notwithstanding clear state and federal law, local authorities throughout Alabama are revoking probation and jailing people who are too poor to pay these fines and fees. EJI has challenged this practice in Birmingham, where the municipal court sentenced dozens of indigent people to be confined in the city jail for failure to pay fines.
A shocking number of these sentences imposed for minor misdemeanors exceeded the punishment for felony offenses. EJI obtained relief for one client who had been sentenced to 16 months in jail for four misdemeanors – disorderly conduct, loitering, criminal trespass and giving false information to a police officer – arising out of a single interaction with local police.
Jailing indigent people because they have no money to pay fines results in municipal court systems incurring incarceration costs that are disproportionate to the penological goals served by imprisoning misdemeanor offenders.
Stephen B. Bright, president of the Southern Center for Human Rights, said courts were increasingly using fees “for such things as the retirement funds for various court officials, law enforcement functions such as police training and crime laboratories, victim assistance programs and even the court’s computer system.” He told the Times that, with the private companies seeking a profit, with courts in need of income and with the most vulnerable caught up in the system, “we end up balancing the budget on the backs of the poorest people in society.”
In 2016 Al.com printed the following report:
A Department of Justice letter issued this week reminds city and state judges across the nation they can’t jail a defendant simply because that person can’t pay fines or fees.
The letter stemmed from the DOJ’s investigation of the Ferguson, Mo., police and city court system after the 2014 shooting of a black teen by a white police officer. But it was also welcome news to lawyers and advocacy groups in Alabama who say some small towns around the state have been operating debtors’ prisons with the help of private probation firms.
“I’m really pleased that the department of justice has done that,” said Lisa Borden, pro bono shareholder at the Baker Donelson law firm in Birmingham. “They (DOJ) had seen a taste of it in Ferguson and then realized it was not an isolated thing.”
“The Attorney General made a very clear statement and these are the things constitutionally that the courts cannot do,” Borden said of the DOJ letter.
In 2015 the Montgomery’s Southern Poverty Law Center turned its attention on Alexander City according to a report seen on nbcnews.com
A small Alabama town has agreed to dole out $680,000 among nearly 200 poor people it had jailed for failure to pay court fines, settling a case that embodied a national movement to fight what reformers call the criminalization of poverty.
The lawsuit, filed in September 2015 by the Southern Poverty Law Center, alleged that Alexander City ran “a modern-day debtors prison” in which indigent defendants people had to pay off fines by serving time in the municipal jail at a rate of $20 a day.
Almost immediately after the suit was filed, the city of 15,000 changed its policies to allow poor people to pay off fines differently, either in installments or through community work, Alexander City’s lawyer, Larkin Radley, said.
UNDER PRESSURE: How fines and fees hurt people, undermine public safety, and drive Alabama’s racial wealth divide
A newly released 2019 report by the Alabama Appleseed Foundation produced in partnership with UAB-TASC, Greater Birmingham Ministries and Legal Services of Alabama has comprehensive details and stunning findings. After surveying 980 Alabamians from 41 different counties the study found:
- 83% gave up necessities like rent, food, medical bills, car payments, and child support, in order to pay down their court debt.
- 50% had been jailed for failure to pay court debt.
- 44% had used payday loans to cover court debt.
- 38% committed a crime to pay off their court debt.
- 20% were turned down for a diversion program like drug court because they could not afford it.
- 66% received money or food assistance from a faith-based charity or church that they would not have had to request if it were not for their court debt.
- 55% of the individuals surveyed lacked a driver’s license
- 28% lacked a license because they could not afford a reinstatement fee
- 25% lacked a license because the court took it
- 12% lacked a license because police took it
According to the report: In July 2018 a U.S. federal district judge in Tennessee struck down a Tennessee law that permitted the State to revoke a driver’s license if they had unpaid fines and fees. California, Mississippi and Maine have also ended the practice of automatically suspending licenses for nonpayment of fines and fees and litigation is pending in Virginia, Michigan and Montana.
How Court Debt Makes Us All Less Safe
In order to pay court debt:
- 38% admitted at least one crime to pay off their court debt
- 69% admitted selling drugs
- 55% admitted theft
- 32% admitted to both selling drugs and stealing
- 54% gave up rent payments, risking eviction
“People across Alabama are ending up in jail and with criminal records because they couldn’t pay fines and fees and drive on a suspended license. Jail should be reserved for those who pose a public safety risk – not for those who simply can’t afford to pay. When we jail people for being poor, we only make it more likely that they will be unable to find legitimate employment and that the state will have to pay the tab.”
-Law Enforcement Action Partnership-
Courts should be about the delivery of justice and not singularly focused or driven by the collection of fines and costs.
-Stephen Wallace, Circuit Judge, Jefferson County-
Many of the findings in this report match the challenges I have seen for people coming out of prison. While we may say they have “paid their debt” to society, we rarely forgive their debts to the system. These debts compound the formidable challenges prisoners face when returning from prison. ‘Do not exploit the poor because they are poor and do not crush the needy in court’ (Proverbs: 22:22)
Drayton Nabers Jr., Samford University
The Appleseed study is thorough, comprehensive and detailed. Some of the conclusions are predictable, some are surprising, and many should be acted upon by those who are in charge of our judicial system.
If you take the time to dig into this report you can draw your own conclusion about whether the court system and the office of the District Attorney is being used as a collection agency and whether the system is unfairly weighted to the detriment of the poorest in our society.
You can decide whether people who cannot drive to work because their license has been revoked or suspended, cannot get a job because of their court record, cannot pay their child support or their court fines/fees and end up in jail, lose a job if they had one, then come out with more fines and fees added to their tab, is fair.
There is not an easy answer and there is not a one size fits all solution. The problem is complex. Read the full report. I can’t do it justice by this column.
If you are interested in this topic and the entire Appleseed report you can find it by clicking on the link below. I hope the Appleseed report is downloaded, distributed, and shared by all Bibb County and Municipal leadership.
Winds of change are blowing in the Southern states and the wheels of the Department of Justice still love to grind against the systems and vestiges of the “Olde South”.
2019 may be a good time for reflection and self-study by informed and well intentioned officials who have control of our court systems. After all, elections are at least two years away.
And as to choosing (A), (B), or (C) as the right answer to the question posed at the beginning of this article?
They are ALL TRUE, and that is my opinion. Please feel free to share yours.
Virginia plans to end driver’s license suspensions for court debt, governor says
ANY opinions expressed in this article are the opinions of the writer and are not necessarily those of The Bibb Voice or its Editorial Board. Your Comments are welcome and are always invited.
