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Imprisoned for debt in America
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Imprisoned for debt in America
Imprisoned for debt in America
| Author | Message |
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| Laboryes |
Posted: Sun Jul 18, 2010 5:47 pm
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Joined: 29 Jan 2006 Posts: 1959 |
By Nancy Hanover
16 July 2010 People are being thrown in jail for failing to pay debts in the United States, despite the fact that federal imprisonment for debt was abolished in 1933. The Minneapolis Star-Tribune has documented such arrests, essentially for poverty, increasing throughout the United States. During the last four years, the use of arrest warrants against debtors in Minnesota has jumped by 60 percent, to 845 cases in 2009. The exposé showed that sometimes the unpaid bills were as low as $85. The mechanism used to extract payment from the impoverished is the bench warrant. Workers are not actually incarcerated for debt, but for failing to respond to the legal system. However, the perpetrators of the court filings, the debt buyers and their legal representatives, are transparently using the system to intimidate, harass and frighten individuals into payments, sometimes for debts they do not even owe. Read More _________________ "When people refuse to obey, then democracy comes alive." Howard Zinn |
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| Lex87 |
Posted: Fri Aug 27, 2010 10:13 pm
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Joined: 31 Mar 2010 Posts: 24 Location: Victoria |
It's amazing how laws on the books can continue to be ignored in many places. It's the same in Canada too, I hear, or at least that's what my toronto criminal lawyer friend tells my incarcerated son all the time. Not good.
_________________ Love is a snowmobile racing across the tundra and then suddenly, it flips over, pinning you underneath. At night, the ice weasels come. |
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