Alexes Harris, UW sociology professor and ACLU-WA board member, dissects the phenomenon of modern-day debtor’s prisons in an insightful op-ed published in the Los Angeles Times. Harris describes a surprisingly common and disturbing system: “The people least likely to earn a steady wage — the homeless, unemployed and the physically and mentally limited — are routinely labeled "willful" non-payers and sentenced to jail for not fulfilling their sentences.”
As Harris explains, in Washington state and elsewhere, legal debts imposed on people with convictions amount to “pay as you go fees” for their use of the criminal justice system. She lays out the ways these monetary sanctions lead to long-term negative consequences for debtors, keeping many shackled to the legal system long after they have served their time in prison or on probation.
Her assessment gets right to the point: “The aim of criminal punishment should not be to permanently stigmatize and politically and economically marginalize people. And yet, if we look at this system clear-eyed, we must recognize that is exactly what we are doing.”
Nor is there evidence that doing so promotes public safety. As Harris writes: “This system doesn't rehabilitate people and integrate them back into the community; it does the opposite … We as citizens are shouldering the fiscal costs of this system of punishment, and the social costs stemming from non-rehabilitated offenders.”
You can read Harris’s full op-ed at http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-harris-criminal-fines-20140608-story.html. Then check out the ACLU-WA’s hard-hitting report on how court-imposed debts in Washington punish people for being poor at https://aclu-wa.org/docs/modern-day-debtors-prisons-washington.
