March 30th, 2014
In Philosophy
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If you enjoy this article, see the other most popular articles
If you enjoy this article, see the other most popular articles
Debtors prisons raise the risk of corruption in the USA
(written by lawrence krubner, however indented passages are often quotes). You can contact lawrence at: lawrence@krubner.com, or follow me on Twitter.
The problem with putting people in jail for debts is that the courts themselves get corrupted by the confluence of money and power. This is a step down a dark road:
In the spring of 2009, Burdette was doing well. For a year she had worked at the Piggly Wiggly in Childersburg, where nearly a quarter of the 5,200 citizens live in poverty. Burdette’s cashier job didn’t pay much, but it helped her get by.
One May afternoon, she was ringing up customers when a Shelby County sheriff’s deputy approached the register and asked to speak to her outside. “He said, ‘I don’t want to make you look bad or lose your job,’” Burdette recalled. In the parking lot, he told her he had a warrant for her arrest.
After she was booked into jail, Burdette thought she’d see a judge within seventy-two hours, as required by law. That never happened. “Nobody ever came and talked to me,” she remembered. “I didn’t have no clue of how I could get out.”
As the drowsy Alabama summer wore on, Burdette’s debt of over $2,000 grew with the daily jail fee that Harpersville added to her bill. Her family managed to rustle up $2,500, but Burdette said they were told by Penny Hall, Harpersville’s clerk, that her debt was now about $5,000, and that they would have to pay all of it for Burdette to be released. “It was either pay all the money or stay,” Burdette said. So she remained in jail.
Her fellow inmates pressed her for details of her crime. “‘How long have you been here?’ ‘Months.’ ‘What did you do?’ ‘A traffic ticket.’ And they’d just laugh: ‘Are you serious?’” As she recounted the story, Burdette’s voice rose. “There’s a lady in there killing folks, and they get a bond. They get to go to court.”
At the beginning of September, a voice came over the intercom: “Dana Burdette, pack up.” No explanation, no court hearing—just freedom, suddenly. She had spent 113 days in jail.
As a reminder of why debtors prisons were abolished in the USA, we only need remember history:
While slavery had been abolished, Reconstruction brought the rise of “convict leasing,” which ensured that the stream of cheap labor continued. Blacks were routinely arrested for petty crimes like loitering and hit with fines they could not pay. Judges then sentenced the convicts to work off their debts in privately owned mines and plantations, where they were controlled with savage violence. As their debts accrued, a yearlong sentence could turn indefinite, ended only by a cash payment—or death.
Post external references
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http://www.thenation.com/article/178845/town-turned-poverty-prison-sentence
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