All these steep costs compound and pile up, creating multiple barriers to a fresh start and a second chance.
First, when private debt collectors get criminal debts converted into civil judgments it can lead to lower credit scores. This makes it harder to find housing, buy a car, and get a job. Second, the vast majority of states suspend licenses for failure to pay court debt — even though being able to drive is often essential for getting a job, getting to work on time — and yes, paying back criminal justice debt. Forty-one states suspend or keep people from renewing their driver’s license for owing court debt, according to Free to Drive. There are from seven million to 11 million Americans with suspended licenses as a result of traffic and court debt. A Rutgers University study found that 42 percent of New Jersey residents who had their licenses suspended lost their job. Forty-five percent of those who became unemployed couldn’t find another job, and 88 percent of those who found another job reported earning less than in their previous job.
Third, criminal justice debt can deny those leaving prison from attaining the occupational licenses that one in four jobs require for a new occupation and career. Take Jackie, a mother of three, and a trained nursing assistant. Her $800 in debt stood in the way of clearing her criminal history and being able to get the certified nursing assistant license she needed to do the job that she trained for. But she had neither the income nor the savings to pay what she owed and struggled to make $5 monthly payments. Some states go even further, charging exorbitant rates for expungements. Louisiana charges $550. It’s a cruel Catch 22: where criminal justice debt prevents people from finding jobs, it both denies those Americans a second chance and a fresh start and blocks their capacity to pay back such debts.
Actual Prison for Debt:
The new debt prisons are not just metaphorical. Criminal justice debt also lands many in actual jail or prison. In 1983, the Supreme Court ruled that jailing indigent debtors violated the 14th Amendment. Yet judges rarely consider defendants’ ability to pay before imposing fines and fees, and studies across different regions found that one in five people in jail were there for unpaid court debt. Across the country, from Missouri to New York to Texas, people are serving jail time for missing fines and fees payments. Texas jailed over half a million people in 2017 for failing to pay fines and fees and over 450,000 in 2018. As of 2016, 44 states allowed courts to send people back to jail or prison for failing to pay court debt.
In a stark example that seems drawn from a century ago, in Mississippi, judges can give indefinite sentences for people to work off their restitution and court debt at one of the state’s four “restitution centers.” Debtors work for private employers with sentences that can last as long as it takes to pay off their debt. Three quarters of the money people “earn” in these centers goes to the courts and corrections department, and half of the people in the centers were working off less than $3,515 in debt.
This has to stop.
The evidence is now overwhelming that the explosion of criminal justice debt deepens the system’s racial inequities and blocks millions of Americans from the capacity to earn a living and care for their families. We need to call for state and local governments to fund the police and criminal justice system through general revenues or widespread forms of financing instead of such fines and fees. This would both increase second chances and administrative efficiency. The Brennan Center reports that it costs states and local government a whopping 121 times more to collect funds through fines and fees than it costs the IRS to collect the same amount of revenue. And while we undergo a national re-examination of cash bail and other forms of criminalization of poverty, we should make a flat determination to stop jailing anyone for failure to pay criminal justice fines and fees due to poverty or lack of income or savings.
We also must expand legislative efforts to curtail the suspension of driver’s licenses due to unpaid fines and fees as we’ve seen recently in states and cities, including New York, West Virginia, California Washington, D.C., and Chicago. The bipartisan Driving for Opportunity Act, co-sponsored by Senators Chris Coons, Democrat of Delaware, and Roger Wicker, Republican of Mississippi, and supported by Patrick Yoes, the national president of the Fraternal Order of Police, would incentivize more states to stop suspending licenses for unpaid debt. The recent legislation to repeal the ban on Pell grants for those in prison seeking a higher education is welcome news but only a first step. To increase job opportunities and economic independence for those leaving incarceration, far more funding is needed to expand innovative pre-apprenticeship programs for those incarcerated, to support “clean slate” efforts to expunge records for those with arrests or convictions and to provide comprehensive transitional housing and employment help to those leaving prison.
A belief in the economic logic and economic dignity of giving all Americans second and third chances led our nation to end debt prisons once before. It’s time to put an end to them one more time.
Gene Sperling was the director of the National Economic Council under President Barack Obama and President Bill Clinton, and is the author of “Economic Dignity.”
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