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Poverty can still land you in jail

A judge in Pennsylvania's Montgomery County is sending people without money to jail for not paying debts, a trend that is happening across the United States.

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In the United States, you can still go to jail for being poor. 

In just two years, A Montgomery County judge sent residents to jail more than 200 times for debt, according to an article in Newsworks by Emma Jacobs, leaving Pennsylvanians to wonder if debt prisons are really a thing of a Dickens-esque past.


While illegal, jailing the poor for unpaid fines remains a practice throughout the United States, according to a 2010 ACLU report. The Supreme Court's ruling in Bearden v. Georgia (1983) found that jailing an individual who could not pay debts through no fault of their own violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The court concluded that the responsibility lies with the judge to understand the defendant's reasons for not paying fines. 

An example in the ACLU study was that of a Louisiana homeless man who stole less than $40 worth of food and was fined more than $300. When he could not pay, he was jailed. The court released him with a community service sentence. He could not pay his bus fare to serve the sentence, so he was jailed again for nearly 200 days. The ACLU estimated that he cost New Orleans taxpayers $3,500. 

The continuing problem of judges overriding the Supreme Court's decision is exacerbated by different standards for municipal courts—many are not required to maintain transcripts of hearings, or to ensure that lawyers are present in front of district judges, leaving little oversight in proceedings. 

According to the Newsworks article, Montgomery County Judge Francis Lawrence sent one woman to jail six times for her inability to repay fines. The county still hasn't gotten paid. In fact, they spent $3,000 in taxpayer dollars to jail her.

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