Alec Karakatsanis, a lawyer who last year brought one of the only lawsuits to successfully challenge a local court system for jailing indigent debtors, says that the first step was the normalization of incarceration. She was on probation because of a traffic violation. Part II covers a range of preexisting federal constitutional limitations on imprisonment for criminal justice debt. . How to define the category? Donations from readers like you are essential to sustaining this work. State law allows the Department of Motor Vehicles to suspend the licenses of people who have willfully failed to pay these fines and fees, but most California traffic courts do not give drivers a meaningful opportunity to prove that their failure to pay is due to poverty, rather than willful non-compliance. But once a monetary obligation qualifies as a debt, states have implemented the bans protections in one of two ways: First, some states have held that their bans on imprisonment for debt remove the courts ability to issue contempt orders for nonpayment of qualifying debts.116 This is the no-hearing rule. The judgment creditor may pursue execution proceedings, attempting to attach nonexempt property, say, or garnish wages. ^ See Recent Legislation, supra note 23, at 1313, 1315. In 2016, the ACLU of Texas sued the City of Sante Fe for unconstitutionally jailing people for low-level offenses simply because they are poor. Imprisonment for indebtedness was commonplace. See Judicial Procedures of the Municipal Court of the City of Montgomery for Indigent Defendants and Nonpayment, Cleveland v. City of Montgomery, No. For instance, a number of constitutional provisions contained (or had read in) an exception for fraud.104 The fraud exception has been interpreted to cover cases of concealed assets or fraudulent contracting.105 In some cases, even leaving the state would count as fraud.106 And if a court ordered a party to turn over specific assets, that partys refusal to comply would give rise to the jailable offense of civil contempt of court without offending the constitutional bans.107 Second, courts have held a long list of monetary obligations not to count as debts. Some constitutional provisions limited the ban to debts arising out of contract, as opposed to tort or crime.108 In these places, failure to pay child support or alimony could give rise to arrest and incarceration.109 So too with criminal costs and fines.110 Thus, in most states today one can be imprisoned for failure to pay noncommercial debts, including debts stemming from tort,111 crime,112 taxes and licensing fees,113 child support,114 and alimony.115.
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