Another State Faces Allegations of Illegally Jailing Poor

A growing movement against the jailing of poor offenders who cannot pay fines has hit New Hampshire, where the local American Civil Liberties Union says it has uncovered a pattern of unconstitutional moves by judges.

The state ACLU chapter said in a report released Wednesday morning that it found cases in almost every county of indigent defendants who were incarcerated without any attempt to determine why they couldn't pay and were denied an opportunity to be assigned a lawyer. "The judges simply put them in jail," the report says.

That's illegal, and resembles methods used to throw people into debtors prisons, which were abolished in the mid-1800s, the ACLU of New Hampshire said.

Across the country, the ACLU and other civil rights organizations are pressing local courts to curtail their reliance on fines, fees and surcharges related to traffic tickets and other offenses that normally would not result in jail time. The groups have documented how people who can't pay those fines are regularly put behind bars as an alternative, a strategy they say treats the poor unfairly and deprives them of due process.

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