In Minnesota, many debtors spend up to forty-eight hours in cells, often sharing them with actual criminal suspects. In extreme cases, people stay in jail until they satisfy the judge with a minimum payment. The median debt cited in Minnesota warrants was $3,512 in 2009, but one was as low as $85.11
In seventh-century-BCE Athens, a dictator named Draco created a legal code, the first the city had ever known. Its underlying philosophy bears his name today—Draconian. The code permitted enslavement for debt, and almost all criminal offenses, great and small, carried the death penalty. The theory was that crime and unpaid debts would disappear in the face of these harsh punishments, and life would be beautiful for everyone. But Draco’s code created hell on earth. The threat of enslavement or execution for some random trivial incident paralyzed ordinary life. To everyone’s relief, Draco’s successor, Solon, a poet king, humanized the code. Yet, as George Santayana noted, those who don’t learn from history are doomed to repeat it, and the lessons of Draco’s code have been forgotten and relearned across centuries and continents down to this day.
In keeping with Draco’s model, many of America’s jailed debtors fall into their predicament because they can’t pay fees imposed by an earlier conviction. Edwina Nowlin, an utterly impoverished Michigan resident, was ordered to reimburse a juvenile detention center $104 for incarcerating her sixteen-year-old son. When she explained to the judge that she couldn’t possibly pay, she was sent to prison. She spent twenty-eight days behind bars before the local ACLU managed to get her out.12 ACLU attorneys said they were seeing a surge in such cases, as is the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law. There are legal precedents in place that ought to prevent these medieval practices, but the law can be a long way off from a courtroom whose judge sees things differently.
In 2006 the Southern Center for Human Rights sued on behalf of a woman locked up in Atlanta for eight months past her original sentence because she couldn’t raise $705 to pay her fine.13 In 2010 the Brennan Center for Justice issued a report based on its study of the fifteen states with the highest prison populations and their use of “user fees”—financial obligations imposed “not for any traditional criminal justice purpose such as punishment, deterrence, or rehabilitation but rather to fund tight state budgets.” The study found that states across the board have introduced these new fees and are using drastic measures to ensure their collection. Debtors’ prison is illegal in all states, yet “re-incarcerating individuals for failure to pay debt is, in fact, common in some” and building “new paths back to prison” for “individuals seeking to rebuild their lives after a criminal conviction.” Eight of the fifteen states suspended driving privileges for missed payments, making it impossible for some people to get to work and leading to new convictions for driving with a suspended license. The report also found that when probation and parole officers have to devote time to fee collection instead of public safety and rehabilitation, they aren’t as effective. The lust for money thus undermines community safety and becomes another cause of what the report termed “over-incarceration.”14
In December 2011 Riverside County, California, began billing criminals in county lockups up to $142 a day for food, clothing, health care, and other jail expenses. The practice had been written into a bill by Supervisor Jeff Stone, a rhyming pharmacist, who said, “In these very challenging economic times, every dollar counts for counties, especially when you’re $80 million in the hole. If you do the crime, then you’re going to do the time and you’re going to pay the dime.”15
The county’s policy stemmed from the state’s efforts, after the Supreme Court ordered that the state thin its inmate herd, to keep many convicted felons in county jail rather than send them to a state lockup. Stone fashioned the county’s new practice so that it was easy to garnish wages and slap liens on inmates who failed to pay the fees. “If somebody is out of jail and trying to make a living and feed their family, and then they get their wages garnished,” said local defense attorney Steve Harmon, “they’re going to be way behind the eight ball.” Tallying the figures, he found that convicted criminals who spend six months in jail—a common sentence—could be on the hook for more than $25,000. Parents of convicted juveniles could also be subject to the fees. These fees proliferate around the country, said Riverside County public defender Gary Windom, in part because they are politically popular and meet basically no countervailing pressure. “The people who commit crimes,” he said, “have very little ability to go to their legislators and argue their case.”16
Sheriff Donny Youngblood pointed out that holding hearings to determine a defendant’s ability to pay would further burden already crowded court dockets. Thanks to the county’s unusually severe unemployment (approximately 14 percent when the policy was adopted) and the dire financial situations of most inmates, he predicted little money would end up being collected.
16
Crime Academies, Rape, Sex Slaves, Infection, Death
The convict slowly wastes away from afflictions that include the rare and untreatable spider endocarditis. No choir boy, he’s left a trail of victims beaten, abused, double-crossed. Drifting to sleep, he dreams. Demons and shadows chase him in a malign darkness. Off in the corner, he spots a hole in the ceiling. A bit of light peaks through, but the demons almost have him. Frantic, he scrambles up into the opening as his pursuers pull at his legs. Intense pain. A nightmare of pain. He makes it through and finds an identical dark room. Demons still behind him, he races to another hole in another ceiling, jumps, scrambles. They have him by the legs. He sees now that it will be room after room, hole after hole without rest. An endless, ghastly eternity of pointlessness and terror.
“I know it was real,” he tells his cellmate. “I’m going to hell.” Maybe you can change, the cellmate says. “Too late,” he responds. “Too late.”
When it starts, it starts fast and keeps moving fast. Just like on the street. Yet the horror might not end so quickly. To those on the receiving end, it’s like being trapped in a corner with flames licking your flesh. Flames don’t care. No sense pleading. There might be a reason, but an excuse will do. This time it was about paperwork. The new fish didn’t have any. When the door slammed behind him, his hands were empty. A calamity he failed to understand. New cons always have paperwork. At least one sheet that lists your crime and how much time you have to do. Murderers, thieves, dopers, even rapists pass muster. But obvious snitches or, even worse, child molesters can’t live among stand-up cons. Such detritus must dwell in a separate circle of hell. Everyone’s information is inspected upon entry.
The first con to spot him saw he wasn’t carrying any paperwork.1
“I don’t have it,” the new fish explained.