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- Sep 30, 2011
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What started as a ticket for making an illegal left turn ended up with a Georgia teenager spending five days in a county jail. That's because 19-year-old Kevin Thompson couldn't quickly pay $838 in fines and fees related to the traffic offense.
Thompson described his time in jail "as the worst in his life," said Nusrat Choudhury, the American Civil Liberties Union attorney who represented the teen in filing a federal lawsuit.
Although DeKalb County and Judicial Correctional Services (JCS) settled the case for $70,000 a year ago, what happened to Thompson still occurs, and it's not confined to one part of the country.
"These practices are rampant across the country, most recently in Louisiana," Lauren-Brooke Eisen, a senior counsel with the Justice Program at the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law, said. "Fees and fines emerged as a powerful funding mechanism when state legislatures balked at raising revenue."
An increasing number of states and localities look to close budget gaps through fees and fines accessed through the criminal justice system. The scenario has created a cottage industry of for-profit probation companies like JCS, which oversee payment plans and collect fines and fees on behalf of municipalities.
In 2010, the ACLU found "this troubling trend in five states, and since then an additional three to four states," Choudhury said. "In 2015 alone, the ACLU and its affiliates files lawsuits in Georgia, Mississippi, Washington and Michigan," she said. "This is a problem that truly spans the country."
"Since the Great Recession we've seen a dramatic rise. What we've seen is hard-pressed state and local governments increasingly relying on fine and fee collection to fill budget gaps," Choudhury said. "There's a conflict of interest when government is collecting money it depends on but is also charged with enforcing fair and impersonal criminal justice. So, courts should not be revenue generators and neither should the police."
The practice has also caught the attention of the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), which this month sent out reminders that jailing indigent people for failing to pay fines violates the U.S. Constitution, a notion the U.S. Supreme Court has upheld.
How you could go to debtors' prison in the U.S.
Some of these states are real bad.
Thompson described his time in jail "as the worst in his life," said Nusrat Choudhury, the American Civil Liberties Union attorney who represented the teen in filing a federal lawsuit.
Although DeKalb County and Judicial Correctional Services (JCS) settled the case for $70,000 a year ago, what happened to Thompson still occurs, and it's not confined to one part of the country.
"These practices are rampant across the country, most recently in Louisiana," Lauren-Brooke Eisen, a senior counsel with the Justice Program at the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law, said. "Fees and fines emerged as a powerful funding mechanism when state legislatures balked at raising revenue."
An increasing number of states and localities look to close budget gaps through fees and fines accessed through the criminal justice system. The scenario has created a cottage industry of for-profit probation companies like JCS, which oversee payment plans and collect fines and fees on behalf of municipalities.
In 2010, the ACLU found "this troubling trend in five states, and since then an additional three to four states," Choudhury said. "In 2015 alone, the ACLU and its affiliates files lawsuits in Georgia, Mississippi, Washington and Michigan," she said. "This is a problem that truly spans the country."
"Since the Great Recession we've seen a dramatic rise. What we've seen is hard-pressed state and local governments increasingly relying on fine and fee collection to fill budget gaps," Choudhury said. "There's a conflict of interest when government is collecting money it depends on but is also charged with enforcing fair and impersonal criminal justice. So, courts should not be revenue generators and neither should the police."
The practice has also caught the attention of the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), which this month sent out reminders that jailing indigent people for failing to pay fines violates the U.S. Constitution, a notion the U.S. Supreme Court has upheld.
How you could go to debtors' prison in the U.S.
Some of these states are real bad.
