Trump's War on the Poor/Minorities continues

[_Kevin Graham]

Sessions Says to Courts: Go Ahead, Jail People Because They’re Poor

Last week, Attorney General Jeff Sessions retracted an Obama-era guidance to state courts that was meant to end debtors’ prisons, where people who are too poor to pay fines are sent. This practice is blatantly unconstitutional, and the guidance had helped jump-start reform around the country. Its withdrawal is the latest sign that the federal government is retreating from protecting civil rights for the most vulnerable among us.

The Justice Department helped shine a light on the harms of fine and fees when it investigated Ferguson, Mo., three years ago after the killing of the teenager Michael Brown by a police officer. As one of the lawyers on that case, I saw firsthand the damage that the city had wrought on its black community.

Ferguson used its criminal justice system as a for-profit enterprise, extracting millions from its poorest citizens. Internal emails revealed the head of finance directing policing strategy to maximize revenue rather than ensure public safety. Officers told us they were pressured to issue as many tickets as possible.

Even the local judge was in on it, imposing penalties of $302 for jaywalking and $531 for allowing weeds to grow in one’s yard. He issued arrest warrants for residents who fell behind on payments — including a 67-year-old woman who had been fined for a trash-removal violation — without inquiring whether they even had the ability to pay the exorbitant amounts. The arrests resulted in new charges, more fees and the suspension of driver’s licenses. These burdens fell disproportionately on African-Americans.

At the time of our investigation, over 16,000 people had outstanding arrest warrants from Ferguson, a city of 21,000. Untold numbers found themselves perpetually in debt to the city and periodically confined to its jail.

These problems were not unique to Ferguson. A Georgia woman served eight months in custody past her sentence because she couldn’t pay a $705 fine. A veteran battling homelessness in Michigan lost his job when a judge jailed him for bringing only $25 rather than the required $50 first payment to court. A judge in Alabama told people too poor to pay that they could either give blood or go to jail.

In 2015, the Justice Department convened judges, legislators, advocates and affected people to discuss this problem and devise solutions. Participants repeatedly asked the Justice Department to clarify the legal rules that govern the enforcement of financial penalties and to support widespread reform.

And so we did. Relying on Supreme Court precedent from over 30 years ago, the 2016 guidance set out basic constitutional requirements: Do not imprison a person for nonpayment without first asking whether he or she can pay. Consider alternatives like community service. Do not condition access to a court hearing on payment of all outstanding debt.

The Justice Department also provided financial resources to the field. It invested in the efforts of a national task force of judges and court administrators to develop best practices. And it created a $3 million grant program to support innovative, homegrown reforms in five states.

Along with private litigation and advocacy, these efforts have helped drive change around the country. Missouri limited the percent of city revenue that can come from fines and fees and announced court rules to guard against unlawful incarceration. California abolished fees for juveniles and stopped suspending the driver’s licenses of people with court debt. Louisiana passed a law requiring that judges consider a person’s financial circumstances before imposing fines and fees. Texas, where the court system’s administrative director said the guidance “was very helpful and very well received by the judges across the state,” issued new rules to prevent people from being jailed for their poverty. The American Bar Association endorsed the Justice Department’s guidance, and the Conference of State Court Administrators cited it in a policy paper on ending debtors’ prisons.

To justify reversing guidance that has had so much positive impact, Mr. Sessions asserts that such documents circumvent the executive branch’s rule-making process and impose novel legal obligations by fiat. Nonsense. The fines and fees guidance created no new legal rules. It discussed existing law and cited model approaches from local jurisdictions. The document also put state-level actors on notice that the department would take action to protect individual rights, whether by partnership or litigation.

Viewed in that light, the true intent of Mr. Sessions’s decision comes into focus. Sessions pulled 25 guidance documents last week. Sixteen of those involved civil rights protections — including 10 related to the Americans With Disabilities Act and one on the special harms that unlawful fine and fee practices can have for young people. Withdrawing these documents is consistent with the Trump administration’s hostility to civil rights in a host of other areas: abandoning oversight of police departments, reinterpreting anti-discrimination statutes to deny protection to L.G.B.T. individuals and switching sides in key voting rights cases.

The push to abolish debtors’ prisons will continue, as community advocates and local officials press on. It would be preferable, of course, for the federal government to fulfill its role as a leading protector of basic constitutional rights. Unfortunately, Mr. Sessions has made clear that under his leadership it will not.

[_EAllusion]

This action is largely symbolic, DoJ resources notwithstanding, but the symbolism is atrocious.

The op-ed doesn't focus on it, but one of the main contributors to this problem is an unwillingness by politicians to pay for government services with broad tax increases. So, instead, they have local governments hike up and multiply fees and fines to finance its operations. The thing about fees and fines is that the less money you make, the larger % of your income those become. Conversely, the more money you make, the more inconsequential they are. It's a true regressive tax.

It's easy to focus on the graft that comes with the fine system, and there's plenty of that, but there are also basic civil government pressures due to politicians being unwilling to make hard choices between generating revenue and providing services. And that's because they correctly believe the public will punish them for it. So, ultimately, the poor pay for people's unwillingness to be responsible citizens. A downstream consequence of this is the the quasi-criminalization of poverty that this action focuses on.

[_subgenius]

... one of the main contributors to this problem is an unwillingness by politicians to pay for government services with broad tax increases. ...

more likely the main contributor is that Liberal/Democrat politicians are constantly imposing government services that need to be paid for; and since it is mathematically impossible to raise the necessary funds by simply "taxing the rich", either the middle-class gets taxed down into poverty or other sources of income must be considered.

For Trump to have the States sort this out for themselves is a far better solution than whatever Democratic Fundraiser Obama guidance was proposed.

But perhaps I have an incorrect conception on what it means to commit a crime.

[_EAllusion]

... one of the main contributors to this problem is an unwillingness by politicians to pay for government services with broad tax increases. ...

more likely the main contributor is that Liberal/Democrat politicians are constantly imposing government services that need to be paid for; and since it is mathematically impossible to raise the necessary funds by simply "taxing the rich", either the middle-class gets taxed down into poverty or other sources of income must be considered.

For Trump to have the States sort this out for themselves is a far better solution than whatever Democratic Fundraiser Obama guidance was proposed.

But perhaps I have an incorrect conception on what it means to commit a crime.

The US has some of its lowest overall tax rates in the lifetime of most people who are alive. This is especially true of the wealthy. It's not true that it's not possible to raise taxes without collapsing the middle class into poverty. And if you can raise the necessary funds via fees and fines, then those resources exist in a taxable state.

All that aside, I was explicit in pointing out that the problem is either unwillingness to raise taxes or cut services. I left it as a one or the other creating pressure on over-reliance on fees and fines to generate government revenue leading to increased regressiveness in the system hurting the poor.

[_Maxine Waters]

One might always try not parking on handicap spaces, or driving without auto insurance or a license. Sometimes that reduces the number of fines you have to pay.

[_EAllusion]

One might always try not parking on handicap spaces, or driving without auto insurance or a license. Sometimes that reduces the number of fines you have to pay.

Exorbitant fines and penalties issued by the government was a major concern of the founders of the Republic you sometimes pretend to care about.

We could execute people in the street for littering, and the problem wouldn't be solved by the advice of "don't litter." The problem is people's lives are being disrupted in severe ways because they are poor in a way that is not justified by the harm caused by what the government is supposedly trying to prevent. A person does not deserve to have their lives turned upside down, including jail-time and loss of career, because they let weeds grow in their yard.

So a 61 year old woman receives a several hundred dollar fine for failing to put their grass clippings in the right spot due to a back injury. She fails to make payments because she needs the money for medicine, including dealing with the pain from her back injury. Then her license is suspended. She continues to drive because she needs to get to work to earn enough money to pay her basic living expenses and the fine that now includes extra charges for not being paid on time. She's caught driving while suspended and now has a much larger bill and ends up in jail. She loses her job and home.

Your reaction is, "Serves her right for those grass clippings. Maybe next time she'll obey the law!" And to think you sometimes try to take on the mantle of favoring less government intrusion in people's lives.

[_Doctor CamNC4Me]

One might always try not parking on handicap spaces, or driving without auto insurance or a license. Sometimes that reduces the number of fines you have to pay.

Exorbitant fines and penalties issued by the government was a major concern of the founders of the Republic you sometimes pretend to care about.

We could execute people in the street for littering, and the problem wouldn't be solved by the advice of "don't litter." The problem is people's lives are being disrupted in severe ways because they are poor in a way that is not justified by the harm caused by what the government is supposedly trying to prevent. A person does not deserve to have their lives turned upside down, including jail-time and loss of career, because they let weeds grow in their yard.

So a 61 year old woman receives a several hundred dollar fine for failing to put their grass clippings in the right spot due to a back injury. She fails to make payments because she needs the money for medicine, including dealing with the pain from her back injury. Then her license is suspended. She continues to drive because she needs to get to work to earn enough money to pay her basic living expenses and the fine that now includes extra charges for not being paid on time. She's caught driving while suspended and now has a much larger bill and ends up in jail. She loses her job and home.

Your reaction is, "Serves her right for those grass clippings. Maybe next time she'll obey the law!" And to think you sometimes try to take on the mantle of favoring less government intrusion in people's lives.

Wow. You really ran with that one. Executions. Losing one's home.

Or. You know. When you knowingly break the law you knowingly roll the dice and if you come up snake eyes then that's on you. Lots of laws are stupid. Lots of fine are oppressive. I'm not sure what you're really getting at other than people shouldn't be fined to whatever amount is being levied on them? I can agree with that. I like the system they have in, I believe, Sweden where fines are pro-rated according to your income. If you're broke you pay a nominal fine for littering. If you're wealthy you pay out the ass. Seems fair to me.

- Doc

[_EAllusion]

Wow. You really ran with that one. Executions. Losing one's home.

People have lost their homes and careers as a result of petty fines from the government. People have spent large amounts of time in jail where they couldn't do things like work, make mortgage payments, or live with their children. That's a real, on-going consequence. The poor are especially vulnerable to it. That's what the DoJ direction that was just rescinded was concerning.

Execution was referenced as a clear reductio ad absurdum of the stance that any penalty is perfectly fine because people can avoid the behavior the penalty is attached to. For example:

Or. You know. When you knowingly break the law you knowingly roll the dice and if you come up snake eyes then that's on you.

This reasoning.

I'm not sure what you're really getting at other than people shouldn't be fined to whatever amount is being levied on them? I can agree with that. I like the system they have in, I believe, Sweden where fines are pro-rated according to your income. If you're broke you pay a nominal fine for littering. If you're wealthy you pay out the ass. Seems fair to me.

The OP refers to a much less ambitious approach from the DoJ of advising state courts to not imprison people for failing to pay fines without first determining ability to pay and consider alternatives like community service. There also is a practice in some localities of not allowing people to access court hearings unless fines are paid which gives people of means access to the court system and others not. The DoJ advised courts not to do this. Sessions rescinded this.

I generally favor pro-rating fines relative to income. On the opposite end of criminalizing poverty, we also have the problem of the ultra-wealthy not having to worry about obeying laws with civil penalties attached to them because the numbers are insignificant to them. Letting it scale up would help with that too, ala that one episode of the Andy Griffith show where Andy tries to make a wealthy passer-by pay a much larger ticket because Sheriff Andy is the law.

To start, the DoJ's stance was a step in the right direction.

[_Doctor CamNC4Me]

I just want to point out this isn't Kevin Graham's post, but a copy and paste from the linked article. It's poor form to pass off other people's work as your own. If only there were a way to distinguish your words from a sneakily linked article. If only there were a quote feature...

Anyway. Dick move, man.

Sessions Says to Courts: Go Ahead, Jail People Because They’re Poor

Last week, Attorney General Jeff Sessions retracted an Obama-era guidance to state courts that was meant to end debtors’ prisons, where people who are too poor to pay fines are sent. This practice is blatantly unconstitutional, and the guidance had helped jump-start reform around the country. Its withdrawal is the latest sign that the federal government is retreating from protecting civil rights for the most vulnerable among us.

The Justice Department helped shine a light on the harms of fine and fees when it investigated Ferguson, Mo., three years ago after the killing of the teenager Michael Brown by a police officer. As one of the lawyers on that case, I saw firsthand the damage that the city had wrought on its black community.

Ferguson used its criminal justice system as a for-profit enterprise, extracting millions from its poorest citizens. Internal emails revealed the head of finance directing policing strategy to maximize revenue rather than ensure public safety. Officers told us they were pressured to issue as many tickets as possible.

Even the local judge was in on it, imposing penalties of $302 for jaywalking and $531 for allowing weeds to grow in one’s yard. He issued arrest warrants for residents who fell behind on payments — including a 67-year-old woman who had been fined for a trash-removal violation — without inquiring whether they even had the ability to pay the exorbitant amounts. The arrests resulted in new charges, more fees and the suspension of driver’s licenses. These burdens fell disproportionately on African-Americans.

At the time of our investigation, over 16,000 people had outstanding arrest warrants from Ferguson, a city of 21,000. Untold numbers found themselves perpetually in debt to the city and periodically confined to its jail.

These problems were not unique to Ferguson. A Georgia woman served eight months in custody past her sentence because she couldn’t pay a $705 fine. A veteran battling homelessness in Michigan lost his job when a judge jailed him for bringing only $25 rather than the required $50 first payment to court. A judge in Alabama told people too poor to pay that they could either give blood or go to jail.

In 2015, the Justice Department convened judges, legislators, advocates and affected people to discuss this problem and devise solutions. Participants repeatedly asked the Justice Department to clarify the legal rules that govern the enforcement of financial penalties and to support widespread reform.

And so we did. Relying on Supreme Court precedent from over 30 years ago, the 2016 guidance set out basic constitutional requirements: Do not imprison a person for nonpayment without first asking whether he or she can pay. Consider alternatives like community service. Do not condition access to a court hearing on payment of all outstanding debt.

The Justice Department also provided financial resources to the field. It invested in the efforts of a national task force of judges and court administrators to develop best practices. And it created a $3 million grant program to support innovative, homegrown reforms in five states.

Along with private litigation and advocacy, these efforts have helped drive change around the country. Missouri limited the percent of city revenue that can come from fines and fees and announced court rules to guard against unlawful incarceration. California abolished fees for juveniles and stopped suspending the driver’s licenses of people with court debt. Louisiana passed a law requiring that judges consider a person’s financial circumstances before imposing fines and fees. Texas, where the court system’s administrative director said the guidance “was very helpful and very well received by the judges across the state,” issued new rules to prevent people from being jailed for their poverty. The American Bar Association endorsed the Justice Department’s guidance, and the Conference of State Court Administrators cited it in a policy paper on ending debtors’ prisons.

To justify reversing guidance that has had so much positive impact, Mr. Sessions asserts that such documents circumvent the executive branch’s rule-making process and impose novel legal obligations by fiat. Nonsense. The fines and fees guidance created no new legal rules. It discussed existing law and cited model approaches from local jurisdictions. The document also put state-level actors on notice that the department would take action to protect individual rights, whether by partnership or litigation.

Viewed in that light, the true intent of Mr. Sessions’s decision comes into focus. Sessions pulled 25 guidance documents last week. Sixteen of those involved civil rights protections — including 10 related to the Americans With Disabilities Act and one on the special harms that unlawful fine and fee practices can have for young people. Withdrawing these documents is consistent with the Trump administration’s hostility to civil rights in a host of other areas: abandoning oversight of police departments, reinterpreting anti-discrimination statutes to deny protection to L.G.B.T. individuals and switching sides in key voting rights cases.

The push to abolish debtors’ prisons will continue, as community advocates and local officials press on. It would be preferable, of course, for the federal government to fulfill its role as a leading protector of basic constitutional rights. Unfortunately, Mr. Sessions has made clear that under his leadership it will not.

- Doc

[_Doctor CamNC4Me]

Wow. You really ran with that one. Executions. Losing one's home.

People have lost their homes and careers as a result of petty fines from the government. People have spent large amounts of time in jail where they couldn't do things like work, make mortgage payments, or live with their children. That's a real, on-going consequence. The poor are especially vulnerable to it. That's what the DoJ direction that was just rescinded was concerning.

Oh. Well. crap, man. Please offer up a solution that gets people to, you know, not break the law.

- Doc