America Is Locking Its Poor in Debtor's Prisons to Fund Police

[eridani]

http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/277-75/30433-america-is-locking-its-poor-in-debtors-prisons-to-fund-police

Ray Charles Staten Sr. should have celebrated his 60th birthday this month. Instead, his family marked the fourth anniversary of his death. It all started, according to a lawsuit that settled in March 2015, when a small debt became a death sentence in the spring of 2011.

Unable to pay an outstanding debt of $409 in court fines, Mr Staten was arrested and sentenced to 16 days in Mississippi’s Harrison County Jail. Shortly after being booked at the jail, Mr Staten fell seriously ill. Despite his obvious symptoms and his cellmates’ cries for help, the jail’s privately-contracted medical staff allowed his condition to worsen until – on the fifth day of his sentence – he collapsed in his cell and, upon being transported to a medical center, could not be revived. He had suffered acute peritonitis, a life-threatening infection of the abdominal lining for which early treatment is essential.

Whenever the government locks someone in jail, it has a constitutional duty to provide adequate medical care, a responsibility that can’t be evaded simply by contracting it out to a for-profit company. Unfortunately, Mr Staten’s is a familiar story: the ACLU is currently litigating a case in a Mississippi prison that challenges, in part, the dangerously inadequate health care provided by Health Assurance, a private corporation also responsible for Mr Staten’s medical treatment — or lack thereof.

Mr Staten’s experience is far from unusual. Every day, indigent Americans are ripped from their homes and their communities and forced into jails of varying degrees of dysfunction and decay. The US supreme court ruled three decades ago that it is unconstitutional to imprison people because they cannot afford to pay debts. The ruling, however, hasn’t ended the practice of jailing people for unpaid government fees and fines.

[msongs]

1. and our elected dems are all fine with this....except for bernie sanders the other day...nt

[BrotherIvan]

4. kicking the hornets nest

Remember, we're not supposed to talk about economic issues. Look forward not backward. Neoliberalism is off the table.

[Enthusiast]

2. If the TPP is passed they will have to build thousands of new debtors prisons to house the poor.

[pansypoo53219]

3. the price for tinkle down 'free' tax cuts from the 'fiscal conservatives'.

[LuvNewcastle]

5. I live in Harrison County,

and I had to do some time in the jail here for the same thing -- unpaid fines. It's a long story, but I thought I had paid those fines and it showed that I hadn't. Anyway, I ended up spending 4 months in jail. I plead to the judge to let me go to work and pay off the fines, but he wouldn't even listen. I found out while I was in there that the county was getting money for each person that they kept there. It was a fucking nightmare!

[midnight]

6. There is something wrong when America ships its jobs to foreign countries, and starts

imprisioning it's citizens for profit.