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How did breast cancer survivor Lisa Lindsay end up behind bars? She didn't pay a medical bill -- one the Herrin, Ill., teaching assistant was told she didn't owe. "She got a $280 medical bill in error and was told she didn't have to pay it," The Associated Press reports. "But the bill was turned over to a collection agency, and eventually state troopers showed up at her home and took her to jail in handcuffs."
Although the U.S. abolished debtors' prisons in the 1830s, more than a third of U.S. states allow the police to haul people in who don't pay all manner of debts, from bills for health care services to credit card and auto loans. In parts of Illinois, debt collectors commonly use publicly funded courts, sheriff's deputies, and country jails to pressure people who owe even small amounts to pay up,
according to the AP.
Under the law, debtors aren't arrested for nonpayment, but rather for failing to respond to court hearings, pay legal fines, or otherwise showing "contempt of court" in connection with a creditor lawsuit. That loophole has lawmakers in the Illinois House of Representatives concerned enough to pass a bill in March that would make it illegal to send residents of the state to jail if they can't pay a debt. The measure awaits action in the senate.
"Creditors have been manipulating the court system to extract money from the unemployed, veterans, even seniors who rely solely on their benefits to get by each month," Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan said last month in a statement voicing support for the legislation. "Too many people have been thrown in jail simply because they're too poor to pay their debts. We cannot allow these illegal abuses to continue."
Debt collectors typically avoid filing suit against debtors, a representative with the Illinois Collectors Association tells the AP. "A consumer that has been arrested or jailed can't pay a debt. We want to work with consumers to resolve issues," he said.
Yet Illinois isn't the only state where residents get locked up for owing money. A 2010 report by the American Civil Liberties Union that focused on only five states -- Georgia, Louisiana, Michigan, Ohio, and Washington -- found that people were being jailed at "increasingly alarming rates" over legal debts. Cases ranged from a woman who was arrested four separate times for failing to pay $251 in fines and court costs related to a fourth-degree misdemeanor conviction, to a mentally ill juvenile jailed by a judge over a previous conviction for stealing school supplies.
According to the ACLU: "The sad truth is that debtors' prisons are flourishing today, more than two decades after the Supreme Court prohibited imprisoning those who are too poor to pay their legal debts. In this era of shrinking budgets, state and local governments have turned aggressively to using the threat and reality of imprisonment to squeeze revenue out of the poorest defendants who appear in their courts."
Some states also apply "poverty penalties," including late fees, payment plan fees, and interest when people are unable to pay all their debts at once, according to a report by the New York University's Brennan Center for Justice. Alabama charges a 30 percent collection fee, for instance, while Florida allows private debt collectors to add a 40 percent surcharge on the original debt. Some Florida counties also use so-called collection courts, where debtors can be jailed but have no right to a public defender.
"Many states are imposing new and often onerous 'user fees' on individuals with criminal convictions," the authors of the Brennan Center report wrote. "Yet far from being easy money, these fees impose severe -- and often hidden -- costs on communities, taxpayers, and indigent people convicted of crimes. They create new paths to prison for those unable to pay their debts and make it harder to find employment and housing as well to meet child-support obligations."
Such practices, heightened in recent years by the effects of the recession, amount to criminalizing poverty, say critics in urging federal authorities to intervene. "More people are unemployed, more people are struggling financially, and more creditors are trying to get their debt paid," Madigan told the AP.
Basically says that Nobody´s freedom can be limited just for being a debtor. The arrests along the reason looping or going around this axiom, using "contempt of court" or avoiding court is solved in our laws simply by allowing judge to make decision in favor of creditor for non-presence of the debtor. The paper what creditor needs for the execution process, taking the property, blocking bank accounts, reaching regular salary, selling house etc. is not dependent on presence of the debtor, therefore there is no way to commit so-called "contempt of court". If the judge as the possibility to decide without presence of the debtor, fully in favor of the creditor, he should use it at the 1st place. There is simply a fiction of acceptance of the debt and acceptance of the court decision, so where is the "contempt"? As well as you can´t be arrested for being a debtor, you can´t be even - the law does not allow this - taken by police to the court. It is all the same nature of removal or limitation of personal freedom. That is why there is the "decision for the non-presence" in favor of the side asking for court decision.
The other part is - that this Charter point is meant for private contracts mostly. There is opened space for contracts related to general public interests to be reason for jail. Typically if you don´t pay grow-up money to your children for longer than 3 months, you´ve commited a crime, and you can be taken to court and jailed for this debt. Still this not paying is included in the Criminal Law Codex and the personal freedom is temporary limited because of criminal law background, not just the fact you´re in debt.
The "public contracts" or interests still have to be explicitly written in some kind of special law, what makes their breaking legal reason for limitation of personal freedom. For not paying a medical care - a state medical care, there simply should be a law, saying it is "so dangerous" to society, it is a valid object of crime, not to pay the tax or medical bill, that you can be judged for commitment of a crime or it´s softer version - police gives for quick driving etc. - to be placed into jail.
Honestly, I know only about the children payment so far, to be reason of this, in Czech republic.
Generally I´ve been told by professor of theory of law, that, - the good message of our legal system is, that it does not allow itself to arrest you just for getting into debt.
As long as it´s going to happen commonly, without proper law basis, you´re living in lawless country, lawless state. Driven by money-suckers.
And I´m telling you one thing - as soon as there will be a chance, I do my best to start works on law, what makes all the debts repayments free-will based. As soon as you lend somebody, you won´t be allowed to ask it by force back. Same, if you give someone something for a promise of later payment, you won´t be allowed to ask it by force.
There is very simple christian rule - whenever you lend someone, do not ask it back. This is the moral way, credits and debts should be set up. All the others are amoral. The only exception is like the gift-contract. When someone hurts you after, behaves wrong to you after, then you can take back the loan, what is always going to be basically a "half-gift" allowing the gifted one to choose whether he repays it along conditions in contract or not, and also in what time and with what interest.
All you need is to think in wider consequences and see the others not competitors, but brothers and sisters. Pure christians do not demand lost things back. They much more give even the skirt on top of the coat, when are put to court, to show those hungry and scared of their survival without the money they lent you and do not posses at the moment your faith in Father in Heavens.