This Infuriating Story Shows How Debtors Prisons Are Still A Reality In America

[JayhawkSD]

3. There is a difference between "debts" and "fines."

If you commit an infraction of the law you muct pay a penalty for committing that infraction. That penalty may be financial, in the form of a fine, or it may be temporal, in the form of time served in jail. If you cannot pay the fine then you must serve the time in jail. That is not "debtor's prison."

Why should a person be released from any penalty for commiting an infraction of the law merely because he has no money to pay the fine? If he cannot serve the penalty in one form then he must serve it in the other.

The orig post says that the person in question was given a choice to "either stay longer in jail or spend days on a work crew due to unpaid debt."

That turns out to be a bit of a misleading narrative, because the "unpaid debt" turns out to be "court fees that she racked up after being convicted of theft and drug possession," which would not be owed if she was not stealing and using illegal drugs and getting caught doing so.