The police came to our house on Tuesday. I never received a eviction notice. We came in, and I explained the situation. They offered him 90 days in jail because of failure to vacate. It's unconstitutional.

It's a hard life for renters in Arkansas. It's the only state in America with no implied warranty of habitability. Or in other words, landlords are not required to make repairs or maintain their properties. Perhaps more radical, it's the only state where you can be prosecuted, fined, and jailed for not paying rent on time. Every year more than 2,000 people are charged under Arkansas' Failure to Vacate law. Dustin Duke is a legal aid attorney. He specializes in representing tenants in Failure to Vacate cases.

Failure to Vacate was passed at the beginning of the last century at the bequest of landlords as a easy, cheap method to dispossess tenants of their property with really minimal effort on the landlord's part because the state has taken over that role for them.

If a tenant is even a day late on rent, the landlord can begin the eviction process. Tenants are given only 10 days to vacate the property. A conviction can carry a fine up to $100 for each day the tenant remains in the property and up to 90 days in jail.

It's just black and white. Is your rent due: Yes or No? Did you pay the rent? If the answer is "no" and you haven't gotten out in 10 days, then you can be convicted under the statute as a crime.

This makes things difficult for the third of Arkansas' residents who are renters and have legitimate concerns about the properties they're occupying. Tenants are required to pay rent even if their landlords aren't maintaining their properties. Arkansas is the second poorest state in America and 18 percent of the population that live below the poverty line are now being swept up into the criminal justice system. Kim Barnes was evicted for being late on rent.

They actually fingerprinted me, and took a mugshot, like I was a criminal. I said, "All of this just cause of Failure to Vacate?"

Barnes claimed she had payed the rent on time, but the landlord refused to take her payment.

With me and my situation, I will make sure my kids have a roof over their head. Their rent gonna be the first thing I pay out. I had proof that I had the money order. She just wanted us out.

Under Arkansas' Criminal Eviction Statute, Barnes was given 10 days to move. Despite claiming she moved before the time period ended, her landlord pressed charges for Failure to Vacate.

I had already moved. Once I got my eviction notice, and she wouldn't work with us, we just said, "OK, we'll move." Then I had to go to court today, he asked me, "How do I plead on Failure to Vacate?", and I said, "Not guilty." Because, I mean, I'm not guilty, because I got out of this woman's place, in reasonable time like she asked me to be. After she still wouldn't accept my payment. I have to go back in April, hopefully by then I have all my paperwork showing what dates I did exactly move out.

Challenging a criminal eviction is tricky. If a tenant, like Barnes, wants to plead not guilty, and take their case to trial, they first have to pay the full amount of rent that the landlord claims they owe into the court.

So there's a real incentive there for the tenant just to leave, to get out of the premises, and especially considering they're now facing a crime, most the time it's just a matter of the tenant getting out. And you might say, "Well, what's wrong with that? If they owe money maybe they should get out." But the problem is the way the system is set up, it allows landlords to abuse the system. The tenant very rarely gets a chance to give their side of the story. But you're holding the rent because the landlord promised to make repairs. You never get to raise those claims of course because this isn't a civil matter, you don't get to raise counter claims in a criminal law suit. Let's just assume it's just a straight up non payment rent case. Even then, you gotta question the wisdom of deciding in this particular case if the state wants to pick up the tab.

The state of Arkansas bears the cost of deploying members of law enforcement to serve evictions and providing prosecutors for court proceedings. The only cost to the landlords' is a small processing fee. That is good news for landlords and their representatives. Jason Bolden is a real estate attorney and a landlord with more than 60 properties.

The criminal method is not as radical as it may seem. I've been handling hundreds of evictions over the years. I've never once seen a tenant ever serve a day in jail due to the Criminal Eviction Statute. I would say 90 percent of all evictions in Arkansas use the criminal method. It's fairly simple, and easy, and inexpensive. If the tenant is staying in your property, and not paying the rent, essentially the tenant's allowed to steal from you. It's a crime akin to a parking ticket. You park at the meter, you don't put any money into that meter, well, then you can be ticketed.

I don't live in my car. Maybe the people who are comparing it to a parking ticket do live in their cars, but this is somebody's home that's being taken away from them. And their conduct is being criminalized. Tenants are sometimes jailed under this statute.

Currently, the data on the number of tenants jailed in cases related to Arkansas' Criminal Eviction Statute is not available to the public. In fact, much of the information available about the reality of landlord-tenant relations in Arkansas has not come from the state, but from legal researchers like Lynn Foster.

With the landlord-tenant situation you have kind of the poorest segment of our society being penalized for this behavior which in every other state is not criminal behavior. I think that's one reason why nothing much has been done and not much attention has been focused on it.

In 2011, Foster joined a state assembled commission of 10 advocates, industry groups, lawyers, and judges to recommend modifications to Arkansas' landlord-tenant law. Their report, released in the winter of 2012, recommended repealing Failure to Vacate.

What the commission recommended, unanimously, was that a better civil eviction statute be put into place. Then, the Failure to Vacate statute should be repealed by the legislature.

The commission's recommendations were approved by representatives of all parties. Most importantly, tenant's rights advocates in both major associations representing landlords and realtors. But implementing the recommendations have proved daunting.

My initial thought, when I received the commission's recommendations, was that we might be able to turn that into legislation and try to get something passed during the session that we were currently in. It became clear to us pretty quickly that the realtors and landlords were very vehemently against this issue and would lobby hard against it. I don't think I expected that kind of opposition to happen so quickly and so strongly. It seemed like the recommendations were the result of consensus.

The Arkansas Realtors Association proved to have an influential lobby. They circulated a letter around the legislature in opposition to the commission's recommendations. After that, few law makers would consider the proposed changes. In a letter to their membership, the Association celebrated that they had stopped the bill. It mentioned that they had "fought legislation intended to fundamentally change landlord-tenant practices in Arkansas." And that "The municipal eviction process would have been eliminated and a warranty of habitability imposed." In other words, evictions in Arkansas could no longer be criminalized, and landlords would be required, under the law, like the rest of the United States, to maintain their properties. After repeated requests for an interview or statement, the Arkansas Realtors Association refused to comment.

There is at least one very, very powerful lobby, that works on behalf of folks who are landlords, and tenants do not have any correspondingly powerful lobby. On the other hand, of course, if you're counting votes, there are more tenants in Arkansas than there are landlords. About a third of all Arkansans are tenants. So, the numbers would be on the tenants side, the money maybe on the landlords side.

Lawmakers in Arkansas meet only for a few months every two years to pass legislation. The Failure to Vacate law won't be debated again until 2015.

It's embarrassing for Arkansas to be an outlier in this way, to use law enforcement to enforce a private contract is pretty unheard of. We don't have debtor prisons in the United States anymore.

It is not a violation of international rights. Rather, it is simply a tool that allows people to cost effectively remove a tenant who is failing to pay the rent and admitting before a judge that they have refused to pay the rent and remained in the property.

When we're allocating resources are we really wanting to supplement their profits? Are we really wanting to supplement the landlords when we can use these resources for so many other things that're so much better. The tenant, they're intimidated by the process don't have lawyers most of the time, and they're facing not only the prospect of owing a lot of money, but even the possibility of jail time.

Things come up, kids you see, parents can see, you can see, and stop trying to bring cops in it, it really not their business. Their concerns is the streets.