Section 2: Fighting Back
- Thomas Harvey graduated from law school in 2009 and while interning at St.Louis Public Defenders office, regularly saw African American defendants in orange jumpsuits for low-level misdemeanors being "treated like they weren't human beings"
- Public defenders are first line of defense in protecting low-income people from high fines and fees
- Kevin Thompson- 18 yr old African American man in Georgia arrested for driving without a license. had $800 in fees and fines, which he was paying in small payments. He fell behind because his license suspension made it impossible to work and was sent to jail for 5 days, without being asked about his ability to pay, yet he had showed up at every probation meeting and not violated it
- Rutherford County in Tennessee- Sheriff Robert Arnold told local paper 386 of his 837 inmates were there for probation violations, shared his opinion that cost of running a jail could be cut significantly if there were not so many people jailed for misdemeanor violation of probation
- Alec Karakatsanis working at Civil Rights Corps, after graduating Harvard Law in 2008 returned to Montgomery City Court, where on first day he saw 67 people (all black) with unpaid traffic tickets- most were pleading their poverty, all of the hearing lasted between 10 seconds to a minute and were sent to jail to work off their fines. He recalls a judge taunting a man for his lack of ability to speak because of a disability.
- Philadelphia story- run by Philadelphia Inquirer in 2009, an elected court clerk failed for decades to have proper records and collect bail money, then when it was discovered there was 1.5 billion in unpaid criminal debt the court used flawed computer data to send payments notices to more than 320,000 people (some bills from decades ago) one woman was told she owed $900 for a hearing she missed in 1990, yet she was in jail at the time of the so called hearing but could not prove it because the prisons records had been destroyed in a flood in 1991
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