How did breast cancer survivor Lisa Lindsay end up behind bars?
She didn’t pay a medical bill — one the Herrin, Ill., teaching assistant was told she didn’t owe. “She got a $280 medical bill in error and was told she didn’t have to pay it,” The Associated Press reports.
“But the bill was turned over to a collection agency, and eventually state troopers showed up at her home and took her to jail in handcuffs.”
In September 2009, Jeffrey Stearns, a concrete-company owner, answered a knock at the door from a Hancock County, Ind., deputy sheriff. The deputy was holding a warrant to arrest Mr. Stearns for not paying $4,024.88 owed to a unit of American International Group Inc. on a loan for his pickup truck.
After being handcuffed in front of his four children, Mr. Stearns, 29 years old, spent two nights in jail, where he said he was strip-searched and sprayed for lice. Court records show he was released after agreeing to pay $1,500 to the loan company. “I didn’t even know I was being sued,” he said, though he doesn’t dispute owing the money.
In a similar case, according to the WSJ, one Illinois resident was arrested for missing a court hearing regarding the $1,159.87 she owned on her Capitol One (COF) credit card. She paid $500 to get out of the local lock-up, which the company took as partial repayment of the debt.
Although the U.S. abolished debtors’ prisons in the 1830s, more than a third of U.S. states allow the police to haul people in who don’t pay all manner of debts, from bills for health care services to credit card and auto loans. In parts of Illinois, debt collectors commonly use publicly funded courts, sheriff’s deputies, and country jails to pressure people who owe even small amounts to pay up, according to the AP.
If debt collectors won’t get you, the courts might. Many states hit people convicted of a crime, even for minor offenses such as speeding, with a range of fees. Skip out on those and you can go to jail, too. Some states also apply “poverty penalties,” including late fees, payment plan fees and interest when people are unable to pay all their debts at once, according to New York University‘s Brennan Center for Justice. Alabama charges a 30 percent collection fee, for instance, while Florida allows private debt collectors to add a 40 percent surcharge on the original debt.
Many Florida counties also use so-called collection courts, where debtors can be jailed but have no right to a public defender. In Pennsylvania, prisoners are ineligible for parole unless they pay a $60 fee, or roughly $40 less than it costs to incarcerate someone in the state for a single day.
Such “criminal justice” fees amount to criminalizing poverty, says an attorney with the ACLU National Prison Project:
Incarcerating people simply because they cannot afford to pay their legal debts is not only unconstitutional but also has a devastating impact upon men and women, whose only crime is that they are poor.
Under the law, debtors aren’t arrested for nonpayment, but rather for failing to respond to court hearings, pay legal fines, or otherwise showing “contempt of court” in connection with a creditor lawsuit. That loophole has lawmakers in the Illinois House of Representatives concerned enough to pass a bill in March that would make it illegal to send residents of the state to jail if they can’t pay a debt. The measure awaits action in the senate.
“Creditors have been manipulating the court system to extract money from the unemployed, veterans, even seniors who rely solely on their benefits to get by each month,” Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan said last month in a statement voicing support for the legislation. “Too many people have been thrown in jail simply because they’re too poor to pay their debts. We cannot allow these illegal abuses to continue.”
Debt collectors typically avoid filing suit against debtors, a representative with the Illinois Collectors Association tells the AP. “A consumer that has been arrested or jailed can’t pay a debt. We want to work with consumers to resolve issues,” he said.
Like states, companies have every right to collect an unpaid debt. But to put people in jail over it is a great step backward for this country. It indicates a legal system as dysfunctional as our politics, as deadbeats like AIG’s Joe Cassano escape responsibility for their chicanery while lining their pockets at the public’s expense. Speaking of, the insurance company’s debt to taxpayers stands at nearly $59 billion. Anyone up for a citizen’s arrest?
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Debtor prisons are all part of the NEO Feudal System. The only solution is true democratic National Socialism. German Socialism is the purest form of socialism. It is not a free lunch system. For every dollar earned, you are required to perform work. There are regulations and enforcement to protect the consumer and the public against fraud. Anti trust laws are enforced to prevent monopoliies. The only competion that you have presently, is competion between workers which compete with other workers who are paid slave labor wages from corporations that have outsourced their manufacturing off shore. Large corporations are broken up into smaller companies to encourage competition. When you only have a few corporations controlling most of the nations wealth, you have price fixing. Under any form of government that concentrates wealth and power into the hands of the few is a totalitarian form of government, a dictatorship and oppresive. Predatory and monopoly capitalism must be elliminated from the face of the earth to free the common man from economic bondage and slavery. Under a true democracy the majority rules. Governments are suppose to protect the weak from the strong. The American people are not asking for a redistribution of wealth, they are asking for a more equitable distribution of wealth where the scales of economic justice is more envely balanced. All the nations that have a national debt to the International Finance Hyenas, the debts are secured by the citizens or tax payers of that country. All the people of the world, including the U.S. are debt surf slaves, except the International Bankers that have their back room board of directors that own the majority of the stocks and bonds and are sitting on the board of directors of these major corporations. I don’t know what form of capitalism you wan’t to live under, but this is not the form of capitalism I wan’t to live under where the wealth is concentrated into the hands of the few. Power corrupts, absolute power curreupts absolutely. The president and the congress are pawns and puppets of international finace. The Elite Politicians, Industrialist and Banking CABAL of the NWO that are members of the Illuminati are all in collusion. It is called intrinsic and constructive fraud, conspiracy to commit fraud, check kiting and counterfeigting. 99% of the world’s citizens do not own any real wealth. The general public does not even own any real commodity money in the form of gold and silver, or real property. All real and personal property is chattel liened property. If you don’t pay tribute of subjects to the Federal, State and local governments which are a collection agencies for the bondholders of International Finance, the government confiscates your property. That is legalized extortion! It is all an illusion of prospertiy. You think you are free and in reality you are not!. Now they are coming for your guns, a violation of your 2nd ammendment rights to bear arms. Where the people fear the government you have tyranny; where the government fears the people you have liberty!
Media Tells all the Propaganda of Lies and deception. There a very little truth behind every media story, Enough Said
/Rant
pay off your debts and expose the abuses.
it would be nice to see the news stories that back up this report
News stations like Fox and CBS…?
Or ones that tell the truth?
Do they even exist?
Pakalert Press is accurate on this reporting. This 70 yr old Grandmother was the victim of an attorney in the State of Wisconsin, known to officials… that he was violating the law. It caused me to be taken by local Police, to the county jail. No Miranda given, and false incarceration for over 24 hours. Believe this reporting and if it happened to me… IT CAN HAPPEN TO YOU! I am Federally classified handicapped, and the bill was $114.00, of which I made payments. American’s Justice system is putting criminals on the streets, and the good civilians in the prisons.