How Cities Make Money by Fining the Poor

[SummerMadness]

How Cities Make Money by Fining the Poor

The Federal Reserve Board has estimated that 40 percent of Americans don’t have enough money in their bank accounts to cover an emergency expense of $400.

No government agency comprehensively tracks the extent of criminal-justice debt owed by poor defendants, but experts estimate that those fines and fees total tens of billions of dollars. That number is likely to grow in coming years, and significantly: National Public Radio, in a survey conducted with the Brennan Center for Justice and the National Center for State Courts, found that 48 states increased their civil and criminal court fees from 2010 to 2014. And because wealthy and middle-class Americans can typically afford either the initial fee or the services of an attorney, it will be the poor who shoulder the bulk of the burden.

In areas hit by recession or falling tax revenue, fines and fees help pay the bills. (The costs of housing and feeding inmates can be subsidized by the state.) As the Fines and Fees Justice Center, an advocacy organization based in New York, has documented, financial penalties on the poor are now a leading source of revenue for municipalities around the country.

 

[Nithavela]

Land of the free!

 

[HTacianas]

How Cities Make Money by Fining the Poor

Exo 23:3

“You shall not show partiality to a poor man in his dispute.

You are in the wrong forum for that.

 

[Nithavela]

Exo 23:3

“You shall not show partiality to a poor man in his dispute.

You are in the wrong forum for that.

Exo 23:10
¶
“Six years you shall sow your land and gather in its produce,

Exo 23:11

“but the seventh year you shall let it rest and lie fallow, that the poor of your people may eat; and what they leave, the beasts of the field may eat. In like manner you shall do with your vineyard and your olive grove.