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ACLU And Brennan Center Reports Expose Resurgence Of Debtors' Prisons

By Real Cost of Prisons Project (The Sentencing Project)

" In For a Penny: The Rise of America's New Debtors' Prisons" October 4, 2010 ACLU And Brennan Center Reports Expose Resurgence Of Debtors' Prisons NEW YORK ? Poor defendants are being jailed at increasingly alarming rates for failing to pay legal debts they can never hope to afford, according to two new reports released today by the American Civil Liberties Union and the Brennan Center for Justice. The reports detail how states across the country, in the face of mounting budget deficits, are more aggressively going after poor people who have already served their criminal sentences, and in so doing undermining re-entry prospects, paving the way back to prison or jail and burdening the public with yet more costs. "Incarcerating people simply because they cannot afford to pay their legal debts is not only unconstitutional but also has a devastating impact upon men and women, whose only crime is that they are poor," said Eric Balaban, senior staff attorney with the ACLU National Prison Project...continue to full post

Full post as published by The Real Cost of Prisons Weblog on October 07, 2010 (boomark / email).