Debtors' Prisons: Life Inside America’s For-Profit Justice System (Part 1/2)

if you wanted to create a system to make people poor and keep them poor this is the system you would create you get a speeding ticket a wealthy person can go and pay it and a poor person cannot I have heard judges tell people that if you do not come up with the money that you are supposed to pay to night I will incarcerate you it's a fundamental misunderstanding of the law these are basic violations of the Constitution that's all they want is money if you don't pay your friends you will go to jail are these debtors prisons are these courts a young man in 2013 hung himself over traffic tickets because he was passed from court to court court that was my baby you don't outlive your children you take away people's lives so people buy back debtors prisons were originally created in the Middle Ages to hold debtors hostage as the ultimate collateral until their families can pay what they owed they were outlawed in the US and 1833 for being unconstitutional but now they're seeing a return in a different form in the south Municipality strapped for cash have been targeting the most vulnerable citizens who are primarily black and living under the poverty line in Missouri some of these municipalities generate anywhere from twenty to forty percent of their total revenue by finding citizens Belridge a small town of 2,700 people collected almost a half a million dollars in fines and revenues in 2014 by issuing seven thousand seven hundred tickets that's at least two tickets for every resident according to the ACLU there are nine states in the country where local governments jail people for failing to pay legal fines in 2013 the 90-minutes apologies of st. Louis County Missouri alone collected sixty million dollars in fines and court fees fines range from traffic violations to quality of life ordinances which find you for things like sagging pants chipped paint mismatched blinds or even having a barbecue in your front yard once you receive a ticket for an offense you have to go to court to pay the fine if you can't pay then you're sent to jail when you leave jail you could face probation fees which only adds to the original debt you were in and couldn't afford to pay to begin with we don't worry about no criminals we worry about the city officials just to the officials owner criminals they took out my money nobody will believe this is the way we live it pains them Valerie Whitner is a Missouri resident making less than thirty thousand dollars a year who has received roughly twelve hundred dollars in fines annually for the past eight years the city has threatened to bulldoze her home she doesn't pay all of her citations for illicit barbecues and growing bamboo in her yard it's like they go into your bank account and say 'hey i guess i need a couple of more dollars today let me go see if I can get miss wiggler hit her up for a couple of hundred oh by the way miss winter it's a piece of siding up there that need to be fixed we got a slight you predict your grass is too high pat your chickens with nothing blast pay their ticket for heaven blinds this don't make no sense I have bamboo in my yard and excited me saying I had weed you can sell me I'm selling all cars on my property now I'm getting ready to get mad because everybody know about my bamboo he gave me a ticket cuz he wanted me to paint my garage you should like you should the brick who paints them kind of bricks nothing to mess up my bricks that's the kind of unconditional fear that you live in out here something simple is that because you know you don't get a fine for in the 18 years I've been here I've never had a problem until the last 10 years or so and that started with simple citations that you might get then all of a sudden it just started getting crazy seemed like the Gestapo they came to everyone's house looking for things and all my neighbors were telling me they come to your home they come to your house with a ticket you my boss said I went to court I would lose my job so I elected not to go to court I go to work they came to my house and arrested me for not paying a ticket penny still has a setup where you don't have a choice you're gonna give me my money as I've sent you after spying on or we will give you a 1 and you will be arrested they don't care if you can afford it they make that perfectly clear that is not their concern their concern is what is owed to the court it's all about the money you have got to know the effort that I have put into this place and if you gotta lock me up to my grass - how did you go right ahead everybody in pays their is in court on Thursday so you don't have to bother go to your neighbor's house to see them go to the court you see all your neighbors people in the same situations Valerie line up at the local municipal court to try to pay their fines and seek counsel Stephanie Loomis is an attorney at arch city defenders an organization that represents the impoverished of trapped in the system the line stretches well into the end of the bank parking lot the people wait out here for a couple hours this is a cash cow these courts are created to provide revenue for the town this system only affects the poor the poor are the ones lined up night after night outside these courts and the poor are the ones filling the pews this isn't like Grand Theft Auto these are traffic tickets we went with Stephanie just a few towns over from pagedale to Jennings to speak with some of the local defendants outside of the Municipal Court you're walking right now is predominantly all Caucasian male officers in that but everybody will sit down is black everybody I don't have a criminal history anything I get pulled over they search me like a criminal will be out before but I don't even give me a reason why they flags and so I mean but that's normal you know the police are nowhere Courtney oh can I ask why did you pull the other Pole but you see just cuz he wants to be all basically and other cord is same exact thing I did when he was two different colors I was black that's what it was you'd ever seen they not catching any real criminals though that's much like you filling your jails who people who go to work every day who may have expired plates by a day or two and those are the people you targeted I've been jailed 12 times for not being able to afford my papers they're not allowed to incarcerate you for not having money but this is a lot I don't care they still do it anyway you just told me basically imma have to pay the fine or I'm gonna go to jail basically these are type of prices make you don't even want to come back to court you know what I'm saying they only give you a certain amount of time to pay before they put another horn huh that's funny like yield sometimes I just don't have the money to pay a ticket and they had me strip to my socks and my my drawers and pay me put on an orange Simpson like I was a murderer or something my mom was thinking about moving out of st. Louis Missouri just because of how the police treat people the 90 municipalities of st. Louis County were created after white flight from st. Louis largely to exclude poor people and minorities cities like Ferguson which is 67% black are being hit with the most fines and warrants the average household in Ferguson has three warrants for petty violations and these fines are the second highest source of revenue for the city Michael Gunn a st. Louis County Municipal Court judge issues some of these fines and warrants racism exists but I do have I got a I got a problem if you were the mayor and you wanted to make as much money as you could off of these speeders why would you tell them to only stop poor black people that sort of doesn't make much sense does it in addition I don't know what evidence there is of racial profiling I do think that there has only been one side of the story which has been told and that side is from a perspective of poor defendants we have a great web of municipalities in st. Louis County who are serving the individual citizens of those particular areas very well the citizens for the most part want these courts to pay for themselves they don't want to raise taxes to paper they want people who violate the law to pay their fines we don't believe that because you're poor means you could violate the law I make it an inquiry as to whether or not people are able to pay their fines for the most part the reply is that they are able to pay their plans these are people who are guilty so there's something that's going to happen to them you know in order for the system to work you're gonna have to show warrants Thomas Harvey is the executive director of art city defenders in 2014 they drew national attention to these new debtors presence by publishing a 41 page policy paper explaining the issues and filing countless lawsuits against rogue municipalities municipalities Inglis County have never gone through the constitutionally required procedures to determine whether or not someone have the ability to pay before jailing them they target poor people and black people and then lock him in jail to extort the money from them their family in order to meet a budget deficit the most common charge was called failure to appear failure to appear just means you got fined at some point in the past and the judge threatens the person with jail if they don't come back at the next court appearance with some money so a reasonable person doesn't walk back into the courtroom if they don't have the money but then if you don't go back into the courtroom a warrant is issued for your arrest I can't overstate how serious it is because people are literally killing themselves in these jails Charles Anthony Chapman jr. was arrested on bench warrants for traffic tickets in 2013 he was passed from jail to jail and ultimately hanged himself with his own bedsheet in Jennings Missouri he was only 24 years old that's come here holding their sons and if you look at that picture he didn't want let go he loved his son's Anthony wasn't above I was student whatever he did he wanted to be the best well he had a band of friends he loved his kids definitely what a surprise that is the tragedy of all of this Tim boys miss him deeply I'm Paul Paul but I cannot substitute for a dad right down this strip of highway that's probably where he first start getting his first traffic ticket oh there they go this is all they do now his ticket ticket ticket ticket I had a little black Infiniti in the neighborhood we was in young black men were not supposed to drive infinity's okay it was profiling so anthe had accumulated a lot of traffic tickets not nothing serious of running a stop sign he got pulled over and that's the day that they arrested my son it's the last day I seen my son alive my son went to st. Louis County was in jail for five whole days they got rid of transfer him out and he told me all the places he had to go to bill read st. John I got the money stuff I wouldn't paid off all those places and then we found was transferred him to Jennings it was a hundred dollars and I tried everything I could but I had nothing well he went to Jennings he wasn't there 12 hours something happened inside of him at following morning they were knocking on my door little did I know that they'd knock on that door that day would be a true kick in my gut no parent no parent should ever have to go through what we've been through I miss his hugs and you know I miss his hugs so much well with Hamas Lord always hold his beloved son baby brother devoted father protective uncle and loyal friend we thought we'd have more time more time hmm just thought you'd have more time trust me a masa that's that's people die in here and it's just not here in st. Louis this is prevalent everywhere this justice system that we have is broke it it ought to be fixed now it ought to be fixed immediately and quit putting our kids in the ground and kill them you

Channel: VICE

Views: 1,169,885

Rating: 4.7422333 out of 5

Keywords: documentary, documentaries, interview, interviews, culture, wild, lifestyle, world, exclusive, independent, underground, videos, funny, funny videos, journalism, vice guide, vice presents, vice news, vbs.tv, vice.com, vice, vice magazine, vice mag, vice videos, Criminal Justice, Corruption, law, law enforcement

Id: RIghbrn5yfI

Length: 14min 54sec (894 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 16 2016

Reddit Comments

[u/Fuzzzy_Bear]

Can't pay a fine so you go to jail. Waiting in jail, you lose your job. Get out and have no job so you can't pay said fine and go back to jail. I don't get why they think this is a good idea. Putting people in jail is taking away from the economy and the tax payers. So fucking dumb.

[u/Rev2Land]

Asset forfeiture and this need to be outlawed at the federal level. I would rather be taxed half my income than hand over this kind of power to a police force or municipal elected justices.

[u/Rev2Land]

Part 2 for anyone that is interested: http://www.vice.com/video/justice-part-two-private-probation-industry

[u/JewsDidSevenEleven]

Baby got a Prop Joe look going on.

[u/x1009]

Land of the free eh?

[u/the_bass_hole]

when I was 23 i went to jail for 13 day for a 90$ ticket I got when i was 17 in a different part of the state that put a warrant out for me 5 years later. I was sitting in jail for 9 days with no bail before the other county came and picked me up on a friday I i could not go to court till tuesday. At the end I had to pay 135$ for the ticket and court fees and 300 dollars to get my car out of the impound lot but this all happened during finals week of college and two of my teachers would not let me make up my exams. So I lost a 3500$ a semester scholarship. I dropped out of school and now I am addicted to meth.

[u/lslkkldsg]

At the absolute worst, there should be wage garnishment. Sending people to jail over debts is stupid.

[u/Eli-Hayes]

Bitch better have my money.