Colorado Springs, Colorado has agreed to a settlement with citizens who were wrongfully imprisoned over financial debts. The ACLU of Colorado worked along with others to get the Colorado legislature to make the practice of creating debtor’s prisons illegal back in 2014. But a loophole existed. That loophole is probably getting closed soon.
But the ACLU contended that judges in many municipal courts in Colorado also created new hurdles for the poor by requiring those who can not pay to show up in court for each failed payment. An automatic arrest warrant for failure to appear in court is issued if the scheduled payment isn't made in full, according to the ACLU.
Those warrants come with new costs, up to $100 each time in Aurora, and also time spent in jail when the defendant is picked up by police.
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If signed into law, HB 1311 would put a stop to such automatic warrants. Instead, the judges would have to schedule a court hearing for contempt for failure to pay the fine. At the contempt hearing, the defendant would be entitled to a defense lawyer. A jailing could occur only upon a finding that the court fees weren't an undue hardship and a finding that the defendant intentionally was refusing to pay when adequate resources existed.
NPR reports that today, Colorado Springs agreed to a settlement wherein they would pay court costs accrued by citizens victimized by this debtor’s system.
The ACLU of Colorado last year discovered nearly 800 cases where people had gone to jail in Colorado Springs when they couldn't pay their tickets for minor violations. Most were homeless.
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The city has agreed to stop jailing people who are too poor to pay their court fines; and will even pay settlements for people who went to jail.
This settlement will probably cost the municipality thousands of dollars. It’s a small cost to pay for doing what right.