Colorado Springs Will Re-Pay Those Sent to Debtor's Prison in Landmark Settlement

[Purveyor]

Source: ASSOCIATED PRESS

The City of Colorado Springs, which has sentenced hundreds of poor people to debtors prison, has agreed to not only end the unconstitutional practice of converting court fines to jail time, but to also to pay back those who were wrongfully jailed.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Colorado announced the settlement in a statement today.

"The City of Colorado Springs has agreed, as part of a $103,000 settlement with the ACLU of Colorado, to stop converting impoverished defendants’ fines into jail time, to stop sentencing defendants to jail for non-jailable offenses, and to compensate dozens of individuals whose court fines were illegally converted to jail time when they could not afford to pay," the ACLU said in its statement.

Imprisoning people because they are poor and cannot afford to pay court fines violates both federal and state laws against debtors prisons in Colorado.

Read more: http://abcnews.go.com/US/colorado-springs-pay-debtors-prison-landmark-settlement/story?id=38905750

[NJCher]

1. Yay!

This is important to each and every one of us.

This was what they were doing in Ferguson.


Cher

[ReRe]

9. Ferguson, MO...

... was the first thing I thought of when I read it. Only thing is, how far is some $103 thousand going to go in mending Colorado Ssprings error? Couldn't the ACLU have gotten more than that? I've got to go read the whole article. Something seems a little remiss. Depends on how many were wronged.

On Edit: There were 66 people wrongly jailed, so that means they would get a pretty good piece of money out of this. Justice is nice when it comes, which isn't often enough.

[pnwmom]

2. Hurrah to the ACLU!!! Time to send a donation. n/t

[mountain grammy]

3. Yes..and I just got my annual renewal

[Hotler]

4. ......

Long, long time member of the ACLU. Join and/or support the ACLU when you can. They care about every ones rights.

[redwitch]

5. Yes!

Thank you ACLU!

[raging moderate]

6. Hooray for the ACLU! And for Colorado Springs!

Maybe we can finally shake this filthy shred of feudalism off our feet for good.

[ReRe]

10. Naw....

... I don't think we can go that far. Think about it a little longer.

[Solly Mack]

7. K&R

[Tab]

8. Um, isn't this just symbolic?

"The City of Colorado Springs has agreed, as part of $103,000 settlement"

Between legal fees and the sheer number of plaintiffs, it's like nothing, other than purely symbolic. Which is better than nothing, but likely not deserving of a major celebration.

[csziggy]

13. I don't believe that the ACLU collects legal fees

From the link in the OP:
"The city has agreed to compensation terms of $125 a day for each day wrongfully imprisoned, and 66 people are eligible to receive compensation, Silverstein said, explaining that many of these people can be hard to track down because they may be homeless, so they are working on how to get their money to them."

[niyad]

17. please note that this settlement only applies to those jailed since 2014. statute of limitations

has apparently passed on anyone before that time:

. . . .

The payouts only represented people who were jailed under the debtors' prison system since Jan. 1, 2014. Anyone wrongly jailed prior to that will get nothing, because the statute of limitations for suing the city has lapsed.

. . . .

http://gazette.com/colorado-springs-settlement-will-pay-dozens-of-wrongly-jailed-homeless-and-impoverished-people/article/1575474

[questionseverything]

20. if it stops them in the future it is more than symbolic

[LS_Editor]

11. Time for another donation to the ACLU.

[Redness]

12. They say that we are free, only to be chained to this here poverty

When the state cannot convert debt into time, the debtor does so himself, for it is only by selling his time that he can acquire the means of payment.

[niyad]

14. welcome to du

[niyad]

15. one of these days this damned fundieville will enter the modern era.

[niyad]

16. a bit more on the settlements:

. . . .

As part of the settlement, the city agreed to pay one of those who was jailed under the practice, Shawn Hardman, $11,250. Another individual, Barry Crews, will be paid $1,500. Two others will will receive a combined $500.

A statement from the ACLU said Hardman was sentenced on four occasions to a total of more than 90 days in jail for non-jailable panhandling tickets. "I was trapped in a cell that it seemed like I could never get out of," Hardman said in the statement released by the ACLU. "I was told over and over that I either had to pay or go back to jail. I was homeless and jobless, so the cycle kept repeating."

The city also agreed to make a total of $37,625 available to compensate 62 other individuals jailed solely for a non-jailable offense at any time since Jan. 1, 2014, according to the settlement terms.

Colorado Springs also agreed in the settlement to issue the ACLU Foundation of Colorado a check in the amount of $52,159.18.

. . . .

http://www.denverpost.com/news/ci_29854928/colorado-springs-puts-up-103-000-settle-debtors

[niyad]

18. don't get too excited--it isn't like this "heart of darkness", as john sayles called it, actually

cares about people:


First to be cited under Colorado Springs' 'sit-lie' ordinance could face fines of up to $500 each
+

Convinced the law is unjust and immoral, the first people cited under Colorado Springs' so-called "sit-lie" ordinance vowed Tuesday to make their case before a jury. "I think the city has grossly overestimated the amount of support this kind of ordinance has," said Trig Bundgaard, 36, one of the people cited.

Bundgaard and two others - Alan Pitts, 32, and Mark Chamberlain, 27 - pleaded not guilty before a municipal judge Tuesday during their first court appearance since being ticketed for sitting on a sidewalk April 9.

Their citations came during a protest at Acacia Park that drew about 150 people amid concerns the ordinance unfairly targeted homeless people.

The fourth protester cited that day, Cayla Norris, 32, did not appear in court Tuesday, because her case has already been bound for trial, court records show.

. . . .

http://gazette.com/article/1575345

[lonestarnot]

19. Bastards. 103,000 lb peanut.

[packman]

21. Someone explain to me in slow little words

how the city of Colorado could even justify the cost of imprisoning these debtors ? Seems to me that any intelligent court system would work out some sort of payment schedule with the debtors. Wonder how much it cost the tax-payers of the city to house, feed and care for these people.

Also, I am a poor student of Federal law - but even I know that our Founding Fathers had a deep hatred of debtors prisons and did not want that blot on the American government. Isn't it either in the Constitution or Bill of Rights that one cannot be imprisoned for a debt except in rare cases?

[Redness]

22. Explanation

No, it was read into the 14th Amendment's Equal Protection clause. The idea is that, though the penalty is formally non-discriminatory, in substance it discriminates against those least able to pay the fine. What the courts ignore is that a similar argument could be made about the fine itself: though, formally, rich and poor are penalized equally for the same crimes, the fines impose a greater burden on the poor, both because the crimes are less avoidable (as in homeless vagrancy) and because it is harder for the poor to acquire the means of payment. As for your founders, of course they hated debtors prisons; they were largely debtors themselves, albeit wealthy ones, and the American Revolution itself was basically one big debt default.

And as for the inmates' burden on taxpayers, Colorado is a notorious exploiter of prison labor. Now it's just going to have to exploit its debtors the civilized way, which is to say via the taxpaying capitalist. But often the payment schedule intelligently outpaces disposable income, in which case the debt is compounded by fines for non-payment of fines.

[avaistheone1]

23. Awesome.

[pbmus]

24. Colorado Springs is one of the craziest conservative places in the USA....

Lived there for 13 very long years . Beautiful place but the people are