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Skidmore

(37,364 posts)
Sat Jun 7, 2014, 04:07 PM Jun 2014

Making Money Off of the Poor: Modern Debtors' Prisons

This is the worthwhile article. Please read it. There is such a deep strain of evil and inhumanity running through our nation now, that it is hard to comprehend.


http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/24204-a-modern-day-debtors-prison-judges-push-back-against-the-souths-privatization-wave?tmpl=component&print=1

A Modern-Day Debtors' Prison? Judges Push Back Against the South's Privatization Wave
Saturday, 07 June 2014 09:26
By Daniel Ross, Yes! Magazine | Op-Ed

Kathleen Hucks, pictured here, was jailed for nonpayment of fees to Sentinel Offender Services, a private company. Watch her story in part two of the Brave New Films documentary, To Prison for Poverty. (Photo: Brave New Films)
Kathleen Hucks was almost a model parolee.

In 2006 she was convicted of driving under the influence, possession of marijuana, and driving with a suspended license in Columbia County, Alabama. She successfully completed her probation and paid all of her court-issued fines. But Hucks failed to pay all of the additional supervision fees charged by the private probation company supervising her case. Unaware of the oversight, she moved to Richmond County, Georgia. On Labor Day weekend—nearly six years later—a police officer asked for identification.

"I was out walking my dogs when an officer came up to me asking who I was," she said. After running her name through the system, he told her that there was a warrant out for her arrest—a hold on her back in Alabama.

"I kept telling the officer, 'I'm not on probation,'" said Hucks, who lives with her husband in a trailer in the town of Hephzibah, deep in the rural heartland of Georgia. "But he said, 'Ma'am, I have to take you in. It's showing up on here that you're in violation of probation.'"....more
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Making Money Off of the Poor: Modern Debtors' Prisons (Original Post) Skidmore Jun 2014 OP
Beside the obvious human right's violations being committed, Live and Learn Jun 2014 #1
+1 million Louisiana1976 Jun 2014 #2

Live and Learn

(12,769 posts)
1. Beside the obvious human right's violations being committed,
Sat Jun 7, 2014, 04:18 PM
Jun 2014

these companies are stealing taxpayer dollars by jailing people at taxpayer expense to keep their services going. Everybody should be outraged at this.

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