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Kevin Thompson’s incarceration for five days in December 2014 due to his inability to pay $838 in traffic fines and fees to DeKalb County, Georgia, and a private probation company, Judicial Correction Services (JCS), Inc ., represents a trend where for-profit companies are stepping in to assume the role traditionally played by municipal courts in overseeing probation . When Mr . Thompson showed up to court, the judge gave him 30 days to pay his fine and put him on “probation” with JCS . When he was unable to pay the court fines and JCS fees, JCS charged him with violating probation .23 Mr . Thompson spent five days in jail . He felt sad, scared, and ashamed and, even after being released, feared being arrested and jailed again for no good reason, other than for being poor .24
“Offender-funded” justice is another driver of debtor’s prisons:
Beyond bail, unfair fees and fines—and the rising trend of “offender-funded” justice—act as another set of bars keeping defendants locked up . A rash of state and local governments have responded to budget squeezes by forcing the costs of courts and jails onto defendants, charging them for services like room and board in jail, medical care, and even the use of a public defender . (These practices imitate those of private probation, detention, and bail bonds companies .)25
When defendants are unable to pay all of these costs, many states offer the opportunity to be on payment plans . Those do not come cheap either . At least 44 states charge fees to participate in payment plans .26
The Law
Whether for petty municipal violations, driver’s license revocations, child support back payments, or being forced to pay costs traditionally borne by the court system, many poor people get ensnared into a vortex of fines and fees, escalating debt that they are unable to pay off, lost jobs, and incarceration . Their own lives and livelihoods, not to mention their families’, are seriously impacted . Beyond devastating the lives of many people, these practices run counter to well- established law .
Debtors’ prisons were banned under federal law in 1833 .27 A century and a half later, the Supreme Court of the United States affirmed in Bearden v. Georgia that a “state cannot impos[e] a fine as a sentence and then automatically conver[t] it into a jail term solely because the defendant is indigent and cannot forthwith pay the fine in full .”28 While courts are permitted to incarcerate
23 Kevin Thompson, For Profit Companies Are Helping to Put People In Jail for Being Poor. I Should Know, I Was One of Them, am. civil liBerTies union (Jan. 29, 2015, 10:50 AM), https://www.aclu.org/blog/speakeasy/profit-companies- are-helping-put-people-jail-being-poor-i-should-know-i-was-one-them?redirect=blog/criminal-law-reform-racial- justice/profit-companies-are-helping-put-people-jail-being-poor-i-sh.
24 Id.
25 Marshall Thomas, The Overincarceration of America’s Poor, am. civil liBerTies union of n. cal. (Feb. 24, 2015),
https://www.aclunc.org/blog/overincarceration-americas-poor.
26 hBo, LaSt week tonight with John oLiver: MuniCipaL vioLationS, youTuBe (March 22, 2015), https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=0UjpmT5noto.
27 Eli Hager, Debtors’ Prisons, Then and Now: FAQ, The marshall proJecT (Feb. 24, 2015, 7:15 AM), https://www. themarshallproject.org/2015/02/24/debtors-prisons-then-and-now-faq.
28 Bearden v. Georgia, 461 U.S. 660, 667 (1983) (quoting Tate v. Short, 401 U.S. 395 (1971)).
Impact: Collected Essays on the Threat of Economic Inequality