Debitors

A tenet of the American legal system is that it treats the poor and rich alike. The Supreme Court made this clear in 1970, 1971 and 1983, ruling that it is fundamentally unfair and violates equal protection under the Constitution for a judge to lock up an indigent or unemployed. Yet judges routinely jail people to make them pay fines even when they have no money to pay. As Ethan Bronner reported last week in The Times, minor offenders who cannot pay a fine or fee often find themselves in jail cells. And felony offenders who have completed their prison sentences are often sent back to jail when they cannot pay fees and fines they owe because they could not earn money while locked up. Often, these defendants are not told that they have a right to a court-appointed lawyer to challenge their detention. Published: July 13, 2012 nytimes.com 

“Ellen” grew up with no stability in a single parent home.  By the time she was a young woman she had had three children by three different men.  By the early 1990’s she was in and out of trouble with the law. She spent some time in jail in 1991-1993.  When Child Protective Services (CPS) removed her children from her home due to neglect in the early 2000‘s she lost everything she had to live for and dived headlong into drug use.  In 2004 the state took action agains Ellen forcing her to pay child support to the state for the children that the state had in Foster Care.  In 2005 she was convicted of multiple drug charges and incarcerated.  While she was incarcerated the child support payments accrued.  In late 2011 Ellen was paroled to Austin, TX (far from her home town).  She was paroled to Austin because she had no previous address to be paroled to and there were vacancies in halfway houses in Austin.  Ellen made a decision to change her life. By 2012 Ellen committed her life to Jesus, started attending church, found regular employment (at $8.50 an hour) and started to rebuild her life.  Finding herself paroled far from home she was also far from the influences and patterns of her old life. Although it was difficult to start again in a new city she was also able to escape some of her old patterns.  It looked like she was going to be able to turn her life around. Then she got a summons to court in her home county for “child support evasion.”  The  Attorney General’s office was requesting that Ellen be put on probation or incarcerated because she failed to pay child support from 2005 to 2011.  Of course, she was incarcerated at that time but apparently the Attorney General’s office doesn’t know when someone is incarcerated.  In order to avoid being jailed for contempt of court, Ellen had to take time off from work and find a way to travel over 250 miles from her current home to her previous county to appear at 8am on a Monday morning in court.  Not only did Ellen not have the resources to travel to another country she also didn’t have the resources to hire an attorney.  Thank God, Ellen had already started attending church, had already started building relationships with people who had some skills, had already had over a year of sobriety.  Going to court is scary even if you have many resources.  It’s terrifying if you don’t have money, have very little sobriety, and don’t have a lot of academic skills.  And court in real life doesn’t look like court on television. There is a dress code in most courtrooms. The dress code can vary from county to county and court to court.  There is a behavior code as well -- also highly variable. Although you are required to appear at 8am on a Monday morning, in most instances you will be waiting an hour or more to get information on the next step.  In most cases, all that happens is a date for yet another court appearance.  At her court appearance, with the help of a church friend who accompanied her, Ellen was able to fill out the application for a court appointed attorney.  This would not have been possible if Ellen hadn’t already done some work with her pastor on figuring out her income and expenses.  She has a second court date now in about a month. Once again, she will have to request time off from work, find a way to travel the more than 250 mile distance and wade through the hidden rules of the court in order to make an arrangement with the court to pay the more than $25,000 in child support and fines that accrued during her incarceration.  If she is put on probation for this charge of “failing to pay child support” she will also have to pay a monthly probation fee.  If she doesn’t pay, the county will incarcerate her. Many of us only go to court when we are asked to serve on a jury and we complain bitterly for the disruption in our schedules.  Most of us don’t understand the fees or fines associated with parole or probation.  We don’t know what it means to be poor in this country.  We may assume that “debtor’s prison” is a way of the past. It’s true that debtor’s prison isn’t legal in the United States.  It’s also true that people are still being imprisoned when they are poor.God calls us to act with mercy and work for justice.  If you want to find out more about how Parker Lane is helping our neighbors meet these challenges you can read more at www.parkerlane.org.  If you’d like to support the work of the church you can donate on line at that same website.