Debtor's Prison in 21st Century America

February 23, 2016 11:46 AM

Historically, the phrase debtors’ prison refers to any detention facility in which people are incarcerated for their failure to pay a debt. Today, the “debts” that lead to incarceration take the form of monetary penalties established and enforced by municipal courts. (slTheAtlantic)
posted by Kitteh (18 comments total)

This was an excellent article, and a good addition to the pile of stories that lay out in stark detail just how difficult things are (.pdf link) for the (mostly black) residents of these tiny cities in north St. Louis.

As the second link above notes, there's a 10-mile stretch of Natural Bridge Road where you go through sixteen different municipalities. So if you have a broken tail light and you are really unlucky, you could in theory get 16 different tickets on your drive from the river to I-270, all to support the salary and pension of 16 mayors and 16 police forces and 16 city bureaucracies.

The sad irony is that the whole reason these tiny cities exist in the first place is because the first phases of "white flight" were openly racist and tried to zone themselves in a way that kept black families out altogether.
posted by AgentRocket at 12:46 PM on February 23, 2016 [10 favorites]

Another excellent look at this compelling topic, for those who haven't read it yet, is On The Run. The imposition of excessive legal financial obligations, then issuance of warrants for failure to pay, leads people directly into classic"outlaw" status, meaning they literally live outside the law's protections, unable to access health services, housing, education, or work opportunities, or even be a reliable part of their families.
posted by bearwife at 1:12 PM on February 23, 2016 [2 favorites]

My favorite recent tidbit :

A "city" (and I use the term very loosely) in North St. Louis County (about 5 miles from Ferguson) had to disband their police department because the state of Missouri, in the wake of the Micheal Brown shooting and the attendant attention being paid to predatory policing practices, passed a law placing a maximum on how much of a city's revenue can be derived from minor infractions like speeding tickets.

Let's take a moment and think about that. A municipality had to disband their police department because the state of Missouri -- never known for its tradition of racial tolerance -- passed a law stating that municipalities could no longer fleece their own citizens as much.

Now realize that's only one teeny tiny municipality among the 90 Municipalities (and 10 unincorporated divisions) that make up the patchwork-quilt-on-LSD that is St. Louis County -- a county where 12% of the residents live below the poverty line, some among grinding, third-world levels of poverty.
posted by panama joe at 1:37 PM on February 23, 2016 [5 favorites]

Interesting, thanks. I just finished The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander. This article seems to be describing the same structural phenomenon.

There is a tendency to understand intent, much like racism itself, as only an interpersonal phenomenon. Bias, both conscious and unconscious, is real and destructive. But the systemic intent at work in a place like St. Louis is more a matter of inertia than personal biases. Like Frankenstein’s monster, the system has a life of its own. Local courts and jails are not rife with injustice and racial disparity because they are staffed with ill-meaning personnel; they exhibit these problems because they are the product of structures and policies designed with racial hostility. That is to say, ultimately, these structures and policies have worked precisely as planned.

Yes, this.
posted by frumiousb at 3:05 PM on February 23, 2016 [4 favorites]

I assume that these arrests are all for failure to appear in court.
posted by jpe at 3:45 PM on February 23, 2016 [1 favorite]

I am once again depressed about how bad we've let the modern US get. It may be only a fable, but didn't we once have some, oh, values that suggested we were above this racist, classist bullshit? Fuck me.
posted by evilDoug at 3:55 PM on February 23, 2016

I'm not sure why jails moved the coloured signs off of them to begin with.

Defusing blame through policy bullshit.

It is everybody's fucking fault, let's fix this.
posted by AlexiaSky at 4:23 PM on February 23, 2016 [1 favorite]

As I said in an earlier thread on a similar topic: the function of a system is what it does.
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen at 4:32 PM on February 23, 2016 [5 favorites]

Sidestepping the obvious racial disparity issues here*, isn't this a strong example of why amalgamation is a good idea? Once you get to the point where kicking your poor tax base when it's already down is the only way to scare up revenue, maybe it's time to think about the cost of running your municipal services.

Judging from the Wikipedia links in panama joe's comment, over half of St. Louis County's municipalities have fewer than 20,000 residents, and each of these communities apparently needs to run its own full slate of municipal services? Because that's absolutely the best use of tax revenues? This is one of those times where rethinking government structure is less about business efficiency and more about social justice. For all its faults, amalgamation can help governments do right by their most disadvantaged residents.

But let's back up for a second. It's impossible to sidestep the racial issues when amalgamation is implicitly or explicitly about desegregation. And this is Missouri we're talking about, so, well, there you go.

*To pretend to pander to people who are really invested in the idea that this can't possibly be racially motivated
posted by blerghamot at 4:36 PM on February 23, 2016 [2 favorites]

I assume that these arrests are all for failure to appear in court.

Pretty much. If you can't get them for not paying a debt you can get them for contempt of court for failing to pay the debt.
posted by Talez at 5:29 PM on February 23, 2016 [2 favorites]

I would not be at all surprised if some of the people who come up with these laws and statutes are also lobbyists for the for-profit prison industry.
posted by JohnFromGR at 7:00 PM on February 23, 2016 [3 favorites]

AgentRocket, this is indeed sad, but not at all ironic. This is by *design*.
posted by readyfreddy at 10:15 PM on February 23, 2016

To pretend to pander to people who are really invested in the idea that this can't possibly be racially motivated

To be honest, whether someone who supports it is morally-bankrupt and racist or morally-bankrupt and corrupt seems like a rather unimportant distinction.

Engaging people who defend this in an argument about whether the policies are racially motivated seems like starting a conversational land war in Asia...

I mean... the core notion of debtor's prison is just flat-out fucked up. You don't need to look very hard at anyone who supports it to realize that whether it's because of ignorance, malevolence, or corruption they simply should not have a place in government of a modern society. Why bother arguing the racial side at all?
posted by -1 at 10:32 PM on February 23, 2016

I assume that these arrests are all for failure to appear in court.

Your assumption would be wrong. The article itself has a section on people who show up to court and then are immediately hauled out of court in handcuffs when they tell the court they can't pay what they owe. Many of the links in the article confirm that fact.
posted by decathecting at 8:37 PM on February 24, 2016 [3 favorites]

I would not be at all surprised if some of the people who come up with these laws and statutes are also lobbyists for the for-profit prison industry.

I'd like to agree with this, but it's more obviously the 'unsustainable municipality preservation industry' at work.

I'm not a fan of states riding over municipal self-rule, but if there were ever a case for the state saying "sorry, you don't get to be a city any more", it's this. It's as if abstract civic entities were addicts.
posted by holgate at 3:19 PM on February 25, 2016

Utah man dies in police custody after being jailed for $2,400 unpaid medical bill

Yet Another Tale of Death in Jail Over a Debt, in a Nation Officially Without Debtors Prisons: Taken from a hospital suffering from gastroenteritis straight to jail, Joyce Curnell died there of likely dehydration. All over an unpaid court debt.
posted by homunculus at 7:16 PM on February 26, 2016 [1 favorite]

Why Does the Government Pursue Student Debtors in Prison? Getting people behind bars to pay back loans is not an easy business.

Cecily McMillan previously.
posted by homunculus at 7:19 PM on February 26, 2016

The Politics of Debt in America - "From Debtor’s Prison to Debtor Nation."
posted by the man of twists and turns at 6:53 PM on February 27, 2016