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

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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.