Debtor's Prison

[Hussar]

An interesting bit from Yahoo News

A Georgia woman was jailed for 120 days for cocaine possession. She wound up serving over two years because the system which was supposed to allow her to pay her fine, was set up that she actually made less money than what would pay off the fine.

Nice to see the Constitution being upheld like that. So, should we allow prison inmates to be held indefinitely so long as they cannot pay their fine?

 

[dong]

Whoops. I suppose this is an error and not the norm, otherwise it really would be of fundamental concern.

 

[sarah]

The sad thing is, this is closer to the norm than anyone would like to believe. The american justice system is ... well to put it lightly, confused at best. people fall through the cracks all the time.

 

[dong]

In my mind it's easy to suggest a completely new system that does away with the relics and fragments and artifacts that hinder...but then I remember the system is supposed to be adaptive and take current contexts into practice. I therefore suspect that there should be an examination of methodological concerns regarding maintenance of the legal system. But that too is probably being too idealistic.