Jailed for $280: The Return of Debtors' Prisons

By Alain Sherter – CBS MoneyWatch

How did breast cancer survivor Lisa Lindsay end up behind bars? She didn't pay a medical bill – one the Herrin, Illinois, teaching assistant was told she didn't owe. "She got a $280 medical bill in error and was told she didn't have to pay it," The Associated Press reports. "But the bill was turned over to a collection agency, and eventually state troopers showed up at her home and took her to jail in handcuffs."

Although the U.S. abolished debtors' prisons in the 1830s, more than a third of U.S. states allow the police to haul people in who don't pay all manner of debts, from bills for health care services to credit card and auto loans. In parts of Illinois, debt collectors commonly use publicly funded courts, sheriff's deputies, and country jails to pressure people who owe even small amounts to pay up, according to the AP.

Under the law, debtors aren't arrested for nonpayment, but rather for failing to respond to court hearings, pay legal fines, or otherwise showing "contempt of court" in connection with a creditor lawsuit. That loophole has lawmakers in the Illinois House of Representatives concerned enough to pass a bill in March that would make it illegal to send residents of the state to jail if they can't pay a debt. The measure awaits action in the senate.

"Creditors have been manipulating the court system to extract money from the unemployed, veterans, even seniors who rely solely on their benefits to get by each month," Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan said last month in a statement voicing support for the legislation. "Too many people have been thrown in jail simply because they're too poor to pay their debts. We cannot allow these illegal abuses to continue."

Debt collectors typically avoid filing suit against debtors, a representative with the Illinois Collectors Association tells the AP. "A consumer that has been arrested or jailed can't pay a debt. We want to work with consumers to resolve issues," he said.

Yet Illinois isn't the only state where residents get locked up for owing money. A 2010 report by the American Civil Liberties Union that focused on only five states – Georgia, Louisiana, Michigan, Ohio, and Washington – found that people were being jailed at "increasingly alarming rates" over legal debts. Cases ranged from a woman who was arrested four separate times for failing to pay $251 in fines and court costs related to a fourth-degree misdemeanor conviction, to a mentally ill juvenile jailed by a judge over a previous conviction for stealing school supplies.

According to the ACLU: "The sad truth is that debtors' prisons are flourishing today, more than two decades after the Supreme Court prohibited imprisoning those who are too poor to pay their legal debts. In this era of shrinking budgets, state and local governments have turned aggressively to using the threat and reality of imprisonment to squeeze revenue out of the poorest defendants who appear in their courts."

Some states also apply "poverty penalties," including late fees, payment plan fees, and interest when people are unable to pay all their debts at once, according to a report by the New York University's Brennan Center for Justice. Alabama charges a 30 percent collection fee, for instance, while Florida allows private debt collectors to add a 40 percent surcharge on the original debt. Some Florida counties also use so-called collection courts, where debtors can be jailed but have no right to a public defender.

"Many states are imposing new and often onerous 'user fees' on individuals with criminal convictions," the authors of the Brennan Center report wrote. "Yet far from being easy money, these fees impose severe – and often hidden – costs on communities, taxpayers, and indigent people convicted of crimes. They create new paths to prison for those unable to pay their debts and make it harder to find employment and housing as well to meet child-support obligations."

Such practices, heightened in recent years by the effects of the recession, amount to criminalizing poverty, say critics in urging federal authorities to intervene. "More people are unemployed, more people are struggling financially, and more creditors are trying to get their debt paid," Madigan told the AP.

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My personal John Edwards trial: how he fooled me, and what I learned

Walter Shapiro examines what we know about the character and personalities of the 2012 candidates. Shapiro, who is covering his ninth presidential campaign, is a special correspondent for the New Republic.

About three weeks after Sept. 11, 2001, my wife, Meryl Gordon, and I had an off-the-record dinner with John and Elizabeth Edwards at the Washington restaurant Olives. The dinner was at the blurry intersection of Washington life — ostensibly social (Meryl had bonded with Elizabeth after writing an Elle magazine profile of her husband in 2001) but at its core professional (I was a columnist for USA Today and Edwards had White House dreams). Everyone was in a shell-shocked daze after the terrorist attacks, but my only clear memory of that dinner was Edwards’ palpable dislike for John Kerry, an obvious rival for the 2004 Democratic presidential nomination.

That was the beginning of a political-journalistic courtship that now makes me cringe. With Edwards on trial in North Carolina on charges of violating federal campaign-finance laws — after the disgrace of being caught with a mistress and denying being the father of her baby — I wish I had befriended a comparatively more honorable political figure like Eliot Spitzer or Mark Sanford. 

Back during those early, seemingly innocent days, there were a few more four-person dinners and an afternoon visit or two to the house that Edwards rented in Washington. As a reporter, I followed Edwards on one of his first forays into New Hampshire in mid-2002. I can still see Edwards, with Elizabeth at his side, sitting in a hotel bar in Portsmouth at the end of that long campaign day, glassy-eyed from the adulation, too pumped up with the adrenaline rush of politics for ordinary conversation. Those fledgling moments in New Hampshire chronicling the ambitious first-term North Carolina senator helped inspire me to write a book on the 2004 Democratic race in which Edwards (and, of course, Elizabeth) played central roles. 

In hindsight, I feel like the jaded city slicker, bristling with self-confidence that he can never be fooled, who ends up hoodwinked by the smiling rural Southern confidence man. Please understand: I did not deliberately put a thumb on the scale when I wrote about Edwards. It was more that I was convinced by Edwards’ sincerity when he talked passionately about poverty and the Two Americas. And I especially believed (because I spent so much time with Elizabeth) the romantic myth of the Edwards marriage. 

Many Edwards insiders from the 2004 campaign say the vice presidential nomination (bestowed by, yes, John Kerry) changed him. The entourage, the plane, the Secret Service detail and the frenzy of a fall campaign all supposedly fueled Edwards’ self-importance and sense of entitlement. But as I struggle to understand my own entanglement with a scandal-scarred presidential contender, I wonder if this arbitrary division between pre-veep Edwards and post-veep Edwards is too glib. 

The danger signs and character flaws were always there, and I failed to notice them. I was certainly not alone in my blindness. David Axelrod, for example, was Edwards’ first media consultant during the 2004 primary campaign. Even after Axelrod drifted away to concentrate on a long-shot Senate race for a candidate named Barack Obama in Illinois, he returned for Edwards’ last stand in the Wisconsin primary. I recall running into Axelrod in the Pfister Hotel in Milwaukee on primary day and hearing him say of Edwards, “He’ll be president someday.”

The elixir of power can cloud the vision of campaign aides and political reporters alike. When the stakes are as high as the presidency, the wish to believe often becomes irresistible. In Edwards’ case, it was all too easy to go from listening to his boast that he was “the son of a mill worker” and his passionate delivery of a staff-written speech about the disadvantaged to convincing yourself that the North Carolina senator was going to be the greatest anti-poverty warrior since Bobby Kennedy. After too many years of dealing with the reverberations from the “Clinton marriage” (how I hated typing those words), it was so refreshing to see the seemingly solid unit of John and Elizabeth Edwards (who laughingly referred to herself as the “un-Barbie”). 

Aside from Edwards, the presidential contender in recent years whom I thought I knew the best was John McCain. I was there for his marathon rolling press conferences on his campaign bus during the 2000 primaries. Over the years, I had maybe a dozen private breakfasts and lunches with him in the Senate Dining Room. This was not intimacy, but it was a different vision than merely seeing a candidate reading a speech from a teleprompter at a rally. 

And guess what? From the moment that McCain picked Sarah Palin as his running mate until long after the 2008 election, I did not recognize a single thing about the Arizona senator whom I thought I knew well. All those hours of talking — just the two of us — in the Senate Dining Room led to only fleeting bits of insight about McCain. As with Edwards, my certainty that my theories about McCain were true prevented me from seeing the abundant contrary evidence. 

So what lessons for the 2012 campaign have I derived from my embarrassing prior failures of political perception? (By the way, I am hoping to interest Hollywood in a major feature film — is George Clooney available? — about all the political stories that I have gotten right over the years.)

Perhaps the biggest truth is that anyone who reaches the upper ranks of American politics is a user, capable of feigning intimacy when what the candidate really wants is a large check or an endorsement or a flattering profile. That may be especially true of Barack Obama and Mitt Romney — both self-contained men whose few real friendships seemingly predate their involvement in big-time politics. What that means for political reporters and voters is that relatively few people know either Obama or Romney well — and even fewer are privy to what they are really thinking. 

Barack and Michelle Obama — along with Mitt and Ann Romney — have always advertised their marriages as a kind of political endorsement. In a sense, both men benefit from the common voter feeling, “If she loves him and has raised a family with him, then that’s good enough for me.” But without in any way casting aspersions on either the Obama or the Romney marriages, it is worth remembering how hard it is for any outsider to understand the essence of any marriage. Whether it was John and Elizabeth Edwards, Bill and Hillary Clinton, John and Jackie Kennedy or Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt, political history has been filled with marriages that were, in reality, far different than the gauzy imagery of the campaign trail. 

In the end, what covering nine presidential campaigns has taught me is perpetual skepticism. With John Edwards, I learned it the hard way. The campaigns, the political true believers, the nearly $1 billion ad budgets and the TV spokesmen are all trying to sell voters on a product. But presidential candidates — regardless of party or ideology—are always flawed vessels for the hopes of their supporters. They are human beings (more ego-driven than most) with their own secrets and private insecurities.

Probing beneath the public masks of presidential candidates can be a frustrating exercise. But it remains our only defense against charlatans in the Oval Office. My Edwards and McCain miscalculations were, in part, inspirations for this series of columns — for the idea of looking at presidential candidates solely from the perspective of what will matter in 2013 after the winner places his left hand on the Bible and swears “to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution.” Character matters more than position papers in choosing a president. And if you look carefully enough and respect the complexity of the evidence, it is best glimpsed from the middle distance.

That is John Edwards’ lasting legacy to me. Never again will I get so close to the blinding sun of potential political power, and never again will I believe that I hold the full truth about anyone seeking the presidency.

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This Must Be The Place: Coffer

COFFER from thismustbetheplace on Vimeo.

See more from the This Must Be The Place series at
http://www.thismustbetheplace.tv/index.html

Strip Searches: The Supreme Court's Disturbing Decision

by Adam Cohen - Time.com

It might seem that in the United States, being pulled over for driving without a seat belt should not end with the government ordering you to take off your clothes and "lift your genitals." But there is no guarantee that this is the case – not since the Supreme Court ruled this week that the Constitution does not prohibit the government from strip searching people charged with even minor offenses. The court's 5-4 ruling turns a deeply humiliating procedure – one most Americans would very much like to avoid – into a routine law enforcement tactic.
This case arose when a man named Albert Florence was pulled over by New Jersey state troopers while he was driving to his parents' house with his wife and young son. The trooper arrested him for failing to pay a fine – even though, it turned out, he actually had paid the fine. Florence was thrown into the Essex County Correctional Facility, which has a strip search policy for all new arrestees.

Florence – who had not even violated the law – was subjected to one of the more degrading interactions a citizen can have with his government. He was made to disrobe, lift his genitals for the guards to show that he was not hiding anything, and cough in a squatting position. Florence said he was strip searched twice.

After he was released, Florence sued, arguing that strip searches of people arrested for minor offenses violate the Fourth Amendment. There is a lot of support for the view that strip searches are an extreme measure that should only be used when the government has reason to believe the specific person they want to search is concealing weapons, drugs, or other contraband. The American Correctional Association – the oldest and largest correctional association in the world – has a standard saying that strip searches should only be used when there is individualized suspicion. Law enforcement groups – including the U.S. Marshals Service and the Immigration and Custom Services – adhere to this standard.

Many courts have said just what Florence argued – that the Constitution prohibits strip searches of people arrested on minor offenses unless there is individualized suspicion. That includes at least seven U.S. Courts of Appeals – the powerful federal courts that are just one rung below the Supreme Court. Ten states – including Florida and Michigan -- actually make suspicionless strip searches illegal.

But the Supreme Court, by a 5-4, has now given its blessing to strip searches of people who are charged with minor crimes – even if the government has no specific reason to believe they are concealing anything. The majority focused on how hard jailers have it. "The difficulties of operating a detention center must not be underestimated by the courts," the majority opinion said. Strip searches can help keep weapons out of prisons – and disease – and lice.

But the dissenters make a much more compelling case. Justice Stephen Breyer makes the most important argument: that being forced to get naked and be stared at by strangers is inherently "humiliating and degrading." He then set out some of the many disturbing ways in which the government has used this troubling power – including to strip naked a nun, who had served for 50 years as a Sister of Divine Providence, when she was arrested during an anti-Vietnam War protest. Justice Breyer also noted the kinds of offenses that people have committed that have led to them being strip searched: driving with a noisy muffler, failing to use a turn signal, and riding a bicycle without an audible bell.

Finally, the dissent demolishes the main point made in favor of strip searching every arrestee: that it is necessary to keep prisons secure. In fact, there are many ways of keeping weapons and contraband out that are far less degrading. The prison Florence was admitted to also does pat-frisks of inmates and makes them go through metal detectors. One of these detectors is something called the Body Orifice Screening System chair, which can detect metal hidden in the body when inmates sit on it.

People do not like being physically humiliated by their government. The outraged reaction of many Americans to the TSA's post-9/11 airport screening procedures shows how deeply people feel about it – even when the purpose is the very important one of stopping armed terrorists from getting on airplanes. The Supreme Court majority, however, does not seem to get it – or to appreciate the fact that when the government can strip search people who do not wear a seat belt it can strip search any of us.

The conservative Supreme Court majority has been on a crusade in the last few years on behalf of its own very peculiar ideal of freedom. In 2010 in Citizens United v. F.C.C. the court upheld the freedom of large corporations to spend unlimited amounts of money to decide federal elections. At the health care arguments last month, the Justices seemed like they may be inclined to stand up for people's freedom not to participate in a government health care plan. But when there is a case in which the freedom at stake is crystal clear – the right not to needlessly lift one's genitals or squat while coughing for a law enforcement official – this court is firmly focused on the government's important interests in taking it away.

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Next Great Depression? MIT researchers predict ‘global economic collapse’ by 2030

by Eric Pfeiffer

A new study from researchers at Jay W. Forrester's institute at MIT says that the world could suffer from "global economic collapse" and "precipitous population decline" if people continue to consume the world's resources at the current pace.

Smithsonian Magazine writes that Australian physicist Graham Turner says "the world is on track for disaster" and that current evidence coincides with a famous, and in some quarters, infamous, academic report from 1972 entitled, "The Limits to Growth."

Produced for a group called The Club of Rome, the study's researchers created a computing model to forecast different scenarios based on the current models of population growth and global resource consumption. The study also took into account different levels of agricultural productivity, birth control and environmental protection efforts. Twelve million copies of the report were produced and distributed in 37 different languages.

Most of the computer scenarios found population and economic growth continuing at a steady rate until about 2030. But without "drastic measures for environmental protection," the scenarios predict the likelihood of a population and economic crash.
However, the study said "unlimited economic growth" is still possible if world governments enact policies and invest in green technologies that help limit the expansion of our ecological footprint.

The Smithsonian notes that several experts strongly objected to "The Limit of Growth's" findings, including the late Yale economist Henry Wallich, who for 12 years served as a governor of the Federal Research Board and was its chief international economics expert. At the time, Wallich said attempting to regulate economic growth would be equal to "consigning billions to permanent poverty."

Turner says that perhaps the most startling find from the study is that the results of the computer scenarios were nearly identical to those predicted in similar computer scenarios used as the basis for "The Limits to Growth."

"There is a very clear warning bell being rung here," Turner said. "We are not on a sustainable trajectory."

http://limits-to-growth.org/