As the Christian world readies itself for extra masses, spiritual observance and glorious celebration during Easter Week and Jews around the world observe Passover, the concepts of charity and forgiveness seem to be missing in Florida. State judges have been throwing poor people into jail for not paying even minor debts owed to Florida courts. This is a frightening development, particularly when one considers that twenty-five other states are watching and eager to learn how to fund raise in this same horrifying manner.
For those of us who prefer to learn from history rather than repeat it, this is a terrifying trend. One would hope shining a flashlight on the practice could help to eradicate it and discourage other states from emulating such poor behavior. The example given in a New York Times’ article cites a woman who was convicted and sentenced to a crime in 1996. The article outlines how she paid her fine, performed community service as required and thought she had left the justice system behind.
Recently a Florida state judge threatened her with jail. Why? Because she had failed to pay the final $240 in court courts that remained owing in her case. Obviously I do not know all the facts, but on the surface this seems completely and utterly absurd. http://www.nytimes.com/...
Not to disparage the value of our civil servants who work hard like everyone else, when I file one piece of paper with my local county recorder it costs $42. Ten years ago it was $5. I understand the costs of these services are expected to be borne by those who use them, but $42 to stamp, record and scan a one-page document? It seems a bit steep, even for county government.
I can only imagine how much the Florida courts think a judge, a court stenographer, a videographer, a bailiff and needed security, utilities and the public building are worth. However, how can a convicted felon - often unemployable and unable to even volunteer in most communities - expect to earn enough to survive and pay for these services?
For those of you who love math as much as I do, surely you would agree that the charges government often levies against defendants do not pass a good business analysis. Police all over the country grumble about our ineffective drug laws and how non-violent offenders continue to clog up our courts and overcrowd our prisons. In this regard, we are still number one.
According to Wikipedia.com, as of the end of 2007, 7.2 million people were behind bars, on probation or being supervised through parole. The United States incarcerates more people than any other country in the world, more than one in every 100 adults. (China in 2007 came in second with 1.5 million people imprisoned but this rate is 18% of ours even with their massive population.)
Government cannot always operate like a business, as funds must be raised and services provided for the common good. We could eliminate some taxes if we were willing to nationalize industries like energy, health insurance and medical services, but in the interim we must pay for such things as social security, medicare, medicaid, judicial matters, civil defense, societal infrastructure, schools and, of course, prisons.
Being jailed locally is not an exact equivalent of prison incarceration, but I did find some numbers published by the Florida Department of Corrections in September 2008. To house and feed an inmate in a typical adult male prison facility costs $43.11 per day. If that inmate is in a reception center, in which he will be evaluated, medically treated, given vocational training, etc., then the average cost is $94.87 per day. http://www.dc.state.fl.us/...
It was not clear if the female cited in the NY Times’ article was a felon or had committed a misdemeanor but we could assume it was a non-violent offense or she would not have been given a sentence of fines and community service. This woman, incidentally, has not gotten into any further criminal trouble. She does owe $240 in remaining court costs and claims she cannot afford to pay the bill.
I would imagine that most judges could easily write a personal check for that amount. Some of us could as well, as it is rather piddly, but details of this woman's income and assets were not outlined. That said, I cannot fathom how jailing this woman, at a probable cost of at least $40 a day would be a practical solution. If the judge throws her in jail for even a week, the expense of imprisoning her far outweighs the balance she owes. It is obviously the threat that is the big stick for this debt-collection policy.
I might even understand the judge's motivation if it was a punk juvenile whose parents bailed the kid out of every scrape he got in over the years, but as outlined in the Times article, this policy makes me feel sick. There are plenty of torturers from the Bush Administration, white collar criminals on Wall Street or running banks and insurance companies who should go in jail, but this poor woman? It is starting to feel like the justice system is focusing on the old lady who drives below the speed limit rather than the dangerous criminals who speed past her.
Wouldn't it make much more sense to have her do some sort of work for society that provides a benefit? Let her be a librarian's serf, empty trash baskets at the courthouse, scrub the sinks in public bathrooms, peel potatoes at a hospital or pick up trash in the local park. There should be some mechanism for working off court debts, particularly when the debtor is unemployed or impoverished and barely surviving anyway.
I would imagine that even if the judge throws this woman into the local jail, her debt will remain outstanding. Once she gets out, if she still doesn't have access to that $240 and some new fines he will probably stick her with, I have to ask the question. What does the system gain? Do these judges have such fattened egos and cushy lives that they think they are truly better than the rest of us or can they simply not relate to such hopeless poverty in which so many abide?
But for the grace of the universe, my friends, go the rest of us. To me this kind of arrogance goes too far. Help the woman find a way to make that money and we'll all be happy. Isn't there some stimulus money available out of all those trillions we will spend to give her a part-time job for a few weekends so she can earn that money?
One could surmise that forcing the judges and their clerks to become collection agents results in the same mindset of the worst in that profession. Obviously poverty, if you happen to be an imperfect person living in Florida in 2009, has become the sin for which you will be heartlessly punished.
For you history buffs this is not new information, of course, but the Poor Law of 1601 in England assigned management of the poor to local parishes. These local officials housed all able-bodied people without resources in work houses and were expected to turn a profit on their labor. It was a harsh system, as most people in England did not own their own homes. Landlords could send one to these work homes with little more than a flick of the wrist. Persons were not allowed to live even in their own homes if they were unable to pay their taxes.
Of course, the lack of relief further complicated any sort of permanent recovery from debt. If a parent was in a work house, their children and families were required to go with them. Everyone in these debtors’ prisons worked, regardless of age, sex, medical condition or infirmity. It was an unimaginable hell for all.
Obviously this was a poor system and the residents of these squalid places eventually included debtors, felons, orphans, the convicted or merely accused, the poor, the sane and insane. None of the wealthy and ownership classes, however, were then troubled with the homeless. They were hidden away, much like we handle them today as families live in their cars, under bridges and in other dark places. The English law was amended in 1834, but it did little to correct the horrid conditions of filth or the non-segregated communal housing of men, women, children, the old, the young, the violent and the disabled.
We are so accustomed to prisons, that it is odd for 21st century people to learn that incarceration did not arise as a punishment until the 18th century. Prior to that time the options were terribly grisly including only death or exile, the latter culminating in transport to some undeveloped outpost like England's Australian territory. Many innocent poor people were convicted or merely lost in the system. Once in the work houses without a family member or benefactor they were doomed merely because they could not afford legal counsel.
When the US Congress embraced Phil Gramm’s version of deregulation - empowered through a Republican-dominated, taxes-on-the-rich-are-evil policy - we found ourselves with a burgeoning poverty class. Few cared, really, as long as their own 401(k)s doubled every few years and their employers continued to pay for medical and dental insurance. Unfortunately this failed policy, coupled with the greed, deceit and the fraud perpetrated on the American public resulted in George W. Bush’s on-going Great Recession.
You may think you are currently safe, but the combo has critically wounded what used to be our middle class. When March 2009’s job losses crested at 663,000, the highest unemployment rate in 25 years, it became certain that many more American families will fall into the poverty crevasse. My apologies for using so many chilly metaphors, but job losses are only the tip of the iceberg. As millions of small businesses have gone belly up in the last 15 months, the economic outlook is even bleaker. How bleak?
During 2008, 43,546 bankruptcies were filed by businesses. Experts estimate that this would indicate an additional 87,000 to 130,000 businesses failed during that same time period. For every company that files for bankruptcy protection, another two to three simply shutter their doors. As small businesses are the engine under which most jobs are created in the United States, this does not bode well for workers or anyone else. http://www.mcclatchydc.com/... Your house, your car and your possessions are not worth much if no one can afford to buy them from you.
One could assume from these statistics that the majority of people who are not totally discouraged by now are actively looking for work. A recent Time Magazine article illuminated the difficulties that two-parent/one-job families are having when the working parent loses his or her job. Time reported that stay-at-home moms are desperately trying to re-enter the job market, best illustrated by one dedicated web site for this group. Their site crashed when 34,000 women applied for the 54 open positions they listed.
When a self-employed person looks for outside work, however, they do not show up in the unemployment statistics. Their employees, of course, can apply for unemployment benefits, but the owners and entrepreneurs are silent casualties. These people have been forced out in droves over the last few years as business credit declined. It seems that everybody in the middle and bottom of our socio-economic classes is hurting financially in some way.
This is taking its toll on families too. More divorces are evidenced as self-prepared papers are filed with the courts and domestic violence ramps up. One cannot turn on the news without discovering some newly unemployed person who has taken hostages, killed his wife and children or blown complete strangers up in some deranged, calculated plan. This sort of extraordinary mental stress also results in declines in the general population's physical health and mental health, further stressing our general infrastructure.
All of these thoughts lead me to the conclusion that a modern version of a debtor's prison is not the answer. Wake-up, Florida. Your citizens need a compassionate attitude, not a punitive one. A judge, of all people, should be able to see that the new and old poor are already being punished enough.