THE CRIMINALIZATION OF PRIVATE DEBT

["Dave Farber" <farber () gmail com>]

Begin forwarded message:

> From: Kimi Wei <kimiwei88 () gmail com>
> Date: March 4, 2018 at 1:02:48 PM EST
> To: David Farber <dave () farber net>
> Subject: THE CRIMINALIZATION OF PRIVATE DEBT
>
> https://www.aclu.org/issues/mass-incarceration/privatization-criminal-justice/criminalization-private-debt
>
> THE CRIMINALIZATION OF PRIVATE DEBT
>
> An estimated 77 million Americans have a debt that has been turned over to a private collection agency. Thousands of 
> these debtors are arrested and jailed each year because they owe money. Millions more are threatened with jail. The 
> debts owed can be as small as a few dollars, and they can involve every kind of consumer debt, from car payments to 
> utility bills to student loans to medical fees. These trends devastate communities across the country as unmanageable 
> debt and household financial crisis become ubiquitous, and they impact Black and Latino communities most harshly due 
> to longstanding racial and ethnic gaps in poverty and wealth.
>
> 1 in 3 Americans has a debt that has been turned over to a private collection agency. 
> Debtors’ prisons were abolished by Congress in 1833 and are thought to be a relic of the Dickensian past. In reality, 
> private debt collectors — empowered by the courts and prosecutors’ offices — are using the criminal justice system to 
> punish debtors and terrorize them into paying, even when a debt is in dispute or when the debtor has no ability to 
> pay.
>
> The criminalization of private debt happens when judges, at the request of collection agencies, issue arrest warrants 
> for people who failed to appear in court to deal with unpaid civil debt judgments. In many cases, the debtors were 
> unaware they were sued or had not received notice to show up in court.
>
> There are tens of thousands of these warrants issued annually, but the total number is unknown because states and 
> local courts do not typically track these orders as a category of arrest warrants. In a review of court records, the 
> ACLU examined more than 1,000 cases in which civil court judges issued arrest warrants for debtors, sometimes to 
> collect amounts as small as $28. These cases took place in 26 states:
>
> Even without arrest warrants, the mere threat of jail can be effective in extracting payment — even if that threat is 
> legally unfounded. In the case of debts involving bounced checks, private collection companies now have contracts 
> with more than 200 district attorneys’ offices that allow them to use the prosecutor’s seal and signature on 
> repayment demand letters. It’s estimated that more than one million consumers each year receive such letters 
> threatening criminal prosecution and jail time if they do not pay up. But review of company practices has documented 
> that letters often falsely misrepresent the threat of prosecution as a means of coercing payments from unknowing 
> consumers.
>
>
> Kimi Wei
> kimi () thewei com  @kimiwei
> facebook.com/thekimiwei
> 862-203-8814



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