Document Type
Article
Publication Date
2-2016
Abstract
Since the 1990s, and increasingly in the wake of the Great Recession, many municipalities, forced to operate under tight budgetary constraints, have turned to the criminal justice system as an untapped revenue stream. Raising the specter of the "debtors' prisons" once prevalent in the United States, Imprisonment for failure to pay debts owed to the state has provoked growing concern over the year.
This practice both aggravates known racial and socioeconomic inequalities in the criminal justice system and raises additional concerns. First, assessing and collecting such debt may not be justifiable on penal grounds. Second, imprisonment for criminal justice debts has a distinctive and direct financial impact.
Existing approaches have failed to recognize an alternate potential font of authority: state bans on debtors' prisons. Most commentators have thus far focused on the 1983 Supreme Court case Bearden v. Georgia. But, as argued below, certain types of criminal justice debtors fall under an even higher degree of protection than Bearden provides.
While the contemporary discussion on criminal justice debt often makes cursory reference to this historic abolition of debtors' prisons, the legal literature contains no sustained analysis of whether the state bans on debtors' prisons might invalidate some of what's going on today. This Note takes a first pass at this missing constitutional argument.
Recommended Citation
Christopher D. Hampson, State Bans on Debtors' Prisons and Criminal Justice Debt, 129 Harv. L. Rev. 1024 (2016).