At CommonDreams, Andrea Germanos writes—New Report Details How Americans Who Have Debt Held by Collection Agencies Can Get Thrown in Jail: “”
Threatened with arrest for a case involving a few dollars in debt held by a collection agency?
This is not a science fiction, nor a scenario from the United States more than 185 years ago when debtors prisons were still allowed. Rather, it's a part of the current justice system where, in states across the country, state courts and local prosecutors abet debt collectors in arresting and jailing some of the tens of millions of Americans who have debt held by private collection agencies.
The injustice is laid out in new report from the ACLU, "A Pound of Flesh: The Criminalization of Private Debt."
"The private debt collection industry uses prosecutors and judges as weapons against millions of Americans who can't afford to pay their bills," said report author Jennifer Turner, also a principal human rights researcher at the ACLU. "Consumers have little chance of justice when our courts take the debt collector's side in almost every case—even to the point of ordering people jailed until they pay up," she said.
The practice has the potential to affect a wide swathe of the U.S. population: the report notes that 1 in 3 Americans has some debt that's been turned over to a private collection agency, but given entrenched poverty and wealth gaps, it disproportionately affects communities of color. The jailings and threats of jailing affects those often already living in financially precarious situations, such as those relying on Social Security or unemployment benefits, or those who are terminally ill.
[The r]eport found over 1,000 cases in 26 states in which civil court judges issued arrest warrants for debtors. "In 44 states," the report notes, "a court can even issue warrants for the arrest of debtors who fail to appear at post-judgment court proceedings or fail to provide information about their finances." That includes people who may not know they've been sued or received notice to appear in court. [...]
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“As it turns out, we don't "all" have to pay our debts. Only some of us do.”
~David Graeber, Debt: The First 5,000 Years (2011)
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On this date at Daily Kos in 2004: The legacy of McCain-Feingold:
Campaign Finance Reform. It was the ultimate political paradox. While Republicans held a 3x fundraising lead from hard-dollar donations, Democrats had parity in unregulated soft-dollar donations.
Yet Democrats voted for it, trapped between their support for good government and their addiction to soft dollars. Meanwhile, the GOP, who apparently had the most to gain, fought it tooth and nail.
Now, the big Ds (DNC, DCCC, and DSCC) face huge money disparities vis a vis their cash-flush GOP counterparts. Bush will have two to three times as much money as our Democratic nominee. So by winning, and by pushing good government, Democrats lost, right?
On today’s Kagro in the Morning show, Greg Dworkin and Joan McCarter chime in on top stories: Parkland kids march on; the alt-right & gun nuts team up (Again! Man, that’s weird!) to attack them. Things might change if we saw the damage guns do. But who else would display it, and to what end?
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