Most states shut down their debtors’ prisons more than 100 years ago; in 2005, Harpersville, Alabama, opened one back up.
By Hannah Rappleye and Lisa Riordan Seville
14 March 2014
Piling penalties on poor people is profitable, even if the lucre is extremely filthy there are always entities that will happily lap it up.
For example, JCS, Judicial Correctional Services:
.... In the face of strained budgets and cuts to public services, state and local governments have been stepping up their efforts to ensure that the criminal justice system pays for itself. They have increased fines and court costs, intensified law enforcement efforts, and passed so-called pay-to-stay laws that charge offenders daily jail fees. They have also begun contracting with “offender-funded” probation companies like JCS, which offer a particularly attractive solution: collection, at no cost to the court.
Harpersville’s experiment with private probation began nearly ten years ago. In Alabama, people know Harpersville best as a speed trap, a stretch of country highway where the speed limit changes six times in roughly as many miles. Indeed, traffic fines are by far the biggest business in the town of 1,600, where there is little more than Big Man’s BBQ, the Sudden Impact Collision Center and a dollar store. In 2005, the court’s revenue was nearly three times the amount that the town received from a sales tax, Harpersville’s second-largest source of income. The fines had become key to Harpersville’s development, but it proved difficult to chase down those who did not pay. So, that year, Harpersville decided to follow in the footsteps of other Alabama cities and hire JCS to help collect.
JCS is considered a significant player in the private probation universe. Founded in Georgia in 2001 by a group of locals with backgrounds in law enforcement and the finance industry, the company has since expanded its operations to Florida, Mississippi and Alabama. Business has been good: between 2006 and 2009, JCS more than doubled its revenue, to $13.6 million, according to a profile in Inc. magazine....
The setup for lapping up filthy lucre, below:
Another law for the poor
For example, a 2010 report by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) found that fees and fines covered two-thirds of the operating budget of the Orleans Parish criminal court in Louisiana. That is the appeal of private-probation firms: small fines often go unpaid because local governments cannot afford to chase every speeding ticket. JCS claims that without officers overseeing probation, only 30% of offenders complete it; with JCS’s services that rises to 70%. Even more appealing to cash-strapped municipalities, private-probation companies offer their services at no cost to the taxpayer. Instead, boasts JCS, “Supervision is completely offender-funded.”
Defendants who cannot pay fees upfront are put on payment plans, which often come with start-up and monthly administrative fees. Many of these fees are small, but for poor Americans they impose an additional burden that can last long after a judicially-imposed sentence has ended. A 2010 study by the Brennan Centre for Justice, a law and public-policy institute, found that at least 13 of the 15 states with the largest prison populations allowed probation to be extended beyond the judicially-imposed terms for non-payment of criminal-justice debt. A judgment handed down in July 2012 against the town of Harpersville, Alabama, which hired JCS to manage its misdemeanour probation, found that fees could turn a $200 fine into a 41-month-long, $2,100 ordeal.
But ... JCS is being terminated:
Talladega Council votes to terminate contract with JCS
and
Thorsby Council votes to terminate contract with probation company
and
Ozark cancels Judicial Correction Services contract amid extortion, racketeering allegations
SPLC, Southern Poverty Law Center, played a major role in the Ozark cancellation of JCS, as a result of SPLC activities a total of 61 cities have or plan to terminate their contracts.