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Subject Courts Reviving Debtors' Prison For Overdue Fines And Fees!!! {With VIDEO On Court Costs}

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Original Message [link to www.foxnews.com]

Local courts are reviving debtors' prison for overdue fines and fees...even in minor traffic infractions.

Courts across the US are putting those in jail who cannot pay their court costs and fees.

As I am writing this, I cannot believe it is happening.

When one gets caught up in the justice system there is no end to the fees...fees for this...fees for that.

I honestly do not know what people are going to do.___________________________________________________

FROM ARTICLE:

As if out of a Charles Dickens novel, people struggling to pay overdue fines and fees associated with court costs for even the simplest traffic infractions are being thrown in jail across the United States.

Critics are calling the practice the new "debtors' prison" -- referring to the jails that flourished in the U.S. and Western Europe over 150 years ago. Before the time of bankruptcy laws and social safety nets, poor folks and ruined business owners were locked up until their debts were paid off.

Reforms eventually outlawed the practice. But groups like the Brennan Center for Justice and the American Civil Liberties Union say it's been reborn in local courts which may not be aware it's against the law to send indigent people to jail over unpaid fines and fees -- or they just haven't been called on it until now.

Advocates are trying to convince courts that aside from the legal questions surrounding the practice, it is disproportionately jailing poor people and doesn't even boost government revenues -- in fact, governments lose money in the process.

"It's a waste of taxpayer resources, and it undermines the integrity of the justice system," Carl Takei, staff attorney for the ACLU's National Prison Project, told FoxNews.com.

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