"those attorneys and debt collectors are getting judgements in federal court and asking judges to use the US Marshals Service to arrest those who have failed to pay their federal student loans"
The US Marshals enforce (federal) court orders. He was subject to a court order mandating the payment of a debt. It's not like he fell into arrears and they "just showed up". If it was a mortgage debt, or an eviction proceeding, typically it'd be the local sheriff.
Isn't the difference that bankruptcy will not erase student debt. Debt collectors otherwise have to take that into account when collecting, but not for student debt.
Bankruptcy can reduce or restructure the actual debt, but that doesn't affect court orders of limited payment towards a debt - they're separate issues (bankruptcy I suppose voids previous orders of payment, but discharagability doesn't affect the court's order of payment).
It's extremely common for someone to owe a very large, possibly non-dischargable debt (as a result of a criminal fine, lawsuit, alimony, child support, etc), and the court order is something to the effect of "pay $100 / mo", even if this would never actually pay off the debt.
It is also possible for the ordered payment to be too high to be able to be paid, such as in the case when someone lost a well paying job during a recession but the other party's lawyer argues that they are taking a reduced wage job so they don't have to pay in full. While such cases may be rare, they still signify a problem in our legal system.
But it is not illegal to not pay back private or federal debt, right? The federal gov has ways to get payment via tax refunds and social security benefits.
That's what makes this so crazy. They spent thousands in salaries of these federal marshals, plus court costs and time, just to get this guy to sign another promise to pay a couple thousand bucks.
They could have forgiven the debt and come out ahead. Or they could have garnished his wages, or seized his assets and got their money while spending very little.
The only rational argument for why it might be remotely worthwhile to spend more money than the debt on pursuing a debtor would be to make an example to prevent others who owe similar amounts from defaulting (or not paying back when defaulting is illegal). This only makes sense if pursuing a debtor who is willfully ignoring the debt but otherwise able to pay it.
I think use of the police force to enforce private loan contracts is short-sighted based on the ham-fisted overuse of incarceration as punishment in our legal system. Interest rates are already built into the loan instrument to compensate lenders for the risk of nonpayment, while this practice is just kicking someone when they're down...
The only rational argument for why it might be remotely worthwhile to spend more money than the debt on pursuing a debtor would be to make an example to prevent others who owe similar amounts from defaulting (or not paying back when defaulting is illegal).
Isn't this pretty much the argument for law enforcement in general? I doubt it's ever "cost effective" to have police respond to say, noise complaints or minor acts of theft, but the goal is to show people that are consequences for breaking the laws or going against court orders.
Yes, but with loans and debt there is already a more apt mechanism for handling exactly the nonpayment case: interest rates. Student loan interest rates would go up with more nonpayment, making them less affordable, making school tuitions grow more slowly, and other knock-on effects based on straightforward supply/demand. (Remember, price just means "willingness to pay", and schools are optimizing tuition pricing and other costs of attendance for which these student loans are taken out based on their own Laffer curve.)
Whereas kicking someone when they are down (i.e. already can't pay) is cruel and unusual, I agree that making an example of willful nonpayment makes sense, but that shouldn't be done at the expense of taxpayers(/no need for police involvement). That's why wage garnishment and other tools already exist for lenders to use with a simple court order. If the government foots the bill of enforcement, rather than the lenders footing the bill of wage garnishment intervention and court costs, then it will get represented in taxes rather than loan interest rates, which privatizes the gains (loan payments) and publicizes the losses (enforcement costs). The other side effect is that it subverts supply/demand based pricing of education based on student loan interest rates, which props up higher education price inflation.
And in particular $1500 owed since 1987, almost 30 years ago. Now of course we don't know when the last payment was but it makes sense that they would pull an enforcement list based on age of debt and also perhaps smaller amounts where it was clear that the debtor was making no attempt to pay off the debt.
You also have to keep in mind even student debt comes off your credit report after seven years. Why would you pay anything on it after that? You have no incentive to since its not hurting your credit.
However, if some Feds showed up on my front porch after 30 years, I'd probably make sure I pay it off promptly. Going to jail or paying off my student loan? No contest there what I would do.
He might not have had much or anything in the way of tax returns. For example if he was working under the table a lot, in construction or dozens of other trades.
> The US Marshals enforce (federal) court orders. He was subject to a court order mandating the payment of a debt.
That is itself absurd. As a private person you can really only ask courts to put liens on property (or garnishes on income) to get your money. You essentially must identify specific property you own due to their lack of payment as not paying you isn't a crime.
> It's not like he fell into arrears and they "just showed up". If it was a mortgage debt, or an eviction proceeding, typically it'd be the local sheriff.
No, they interfere to allow property to be taken by its rightful owner as decided by a court. If you don't struggle to stay in a house you are not arrested when evicted.
>He says seven deputy US Marshals showed up at his home with guns
Would I be wrong in thinking all US Marshals would be armed at all times, and the article is trying to make this sound like a SWAT raid?
Not that I condone this method of debt collecting - the article seems very light on details. I want to assume that they wrote letters etc before they sent in federal police in order to collect debts.
Not only are they armed, they have a reputation for unusually thuggish behavior, since they know it's unlikely a federal court will discipline their own enforcement body.
Agree. Standard protocol to have a certain number of people (7 marshalls in this case) for safety purposes.
Now if the story was "man from local government loan office showed up at door nicely requesting payment" it wouldn't have the necessary tv news story impact nor would it get the attention and the cooperation of the debtor.
What is the difference between debtors prison and a court system that will rule on a debt, create a court order to pay, and then arrest you for not paying? It sounds like the same thing by another name.
He was "arrested" in the sense that he was brought into court and forced to show compliance with the court's order (in this case, by signing a payment plan). He was not "imprisoned for a debt". There are legal mechanisms to show inability to pay & the court order is supposed to reflect that, even for non-dischargable debts.
So debtors prison with a bit of leeway for those determined by the court to be unable to pay the debt. Which means if the court rules wrongly (which does happen), you can end up with being imprisoned for debt.
Also, I realize in this case he was just arrested and not imprisoned. I wasn't speaking to just this exact case.
The arrest wasn't for debt either, it was for ignoring a court order.
I guess if you don't think there should be any legal mechanism to address non payment of debts then courts shouldn't be involved, but refusing or otherwise failing to participate in the legal process is not the same thing as just failing to pay a debt.
People are getting dragged to court because they have failed to answer a court order, but they aren't getting dragged to court and then tossed in jail because they stopped paying their credit card or mortgage.
Which hey, those are some pretty shitty situations, but why aren't they appearing in court when ordered?
So people aren't put in jail for failing to follow court orders that require them to pay money? That goes against the numerous news reports I've read of that happening. Now, some portion of those jailed may have the means to pay and choose not to. I would guess a large portion falls into that group. But I am highly doubtful that it is 100%.
No, people are defaulting on student loans in record numbers presently, as the huge cost inflation wave of the last 10-15 years is overwhelming the debtors. They aren't being put in jail for non-payment. We'd have a million more people in jail right now if that were the case. Ignore a court order? Well that will get you arrested eventually.
(I would edit my other post but it is now too old).
>Which hey, those are some pretty shitty situations, but why aren't they appearing in court when ordered?
Based on another post I made, it appears that it can happen because they aren't notified because the official process to notify them only goes so far and if they have an old address or some incorrect information, you may never receive the summons.
Here's a good article on the issue of debtors prison. I find it particularly telling that putting someone in actual jail for failure to pay a debt is considered a human rights violation. IMHO, if someone is capable of paying and isn't, the most action which should be taken is to garnish their wages.
The problem is that there is no absolute objective way to determine if someone is able to pay. For example, the court may rule that a person is working reduced wages so they do not have to pay as much, and thus they are required to get a better job. I read of a few cases where this happened in regards to child support during the economic downturn with the court not correctly judging the ability of a person to get a new job at the same level as a previous job they held.
Here's a BBC Radio Four programme that talks about the small towns in Missouri and their excessive use of traffic violations as a revenue generating scheme.
It's a good programme, and worth a lsiten. (As are others in the series!)
> Are excessive traffic fines and debtors' jails fuelling community tensions in suburban Missouri? Claire Bolderson reports on a network of ninety separate cities in St Louis County, most of which have their own courts and police forces. Critics say that their size makes them financially unviable and allege that some of them boost their incomes by fining their own citizens and locking them up when they can't pay.
> This edition of Crossing Continents goes out and about in St Louis County to meet the people who say they are victims of a system which sees arrest warrants issued for relatively minor misdemeanours. Many of the victims are poor and black. The programme also takes us into the courts, and out onto the freeways with some of the County's police, who say they are upholding the law and promoting road safety.
> The US government is not so sure. One of the towns in question is Ferguson where riots erupted after a white police officer shot a young black man dead last summer. In a recent report on the riots, the Department of Justice concluded that the Ferguson police had been stopping people for no good reason. It said they were putting revenue before public safety.
> Claire Bolderson investigates how widespread the practice is and considers the impact on relations between citizens and the authorities that govern them.
This man absolutely was imprisoned for debt. Being compelled by the court to either pay your debt or go to prison is, by very definition, being imprisoned for failure to pay a debt.
The court should have ordered the seizure of bank assets to cover the debt. In no way should owning money ever result in jail time, fines, judgements or otherwise.
He was certainly compelled to appear in court (at what is probably a great waste of taxpayer resources), but after that appearance, I don't see where he would be detained if he didn't agree to pay the debt.
> He says seven deputy US Marshals showed up at his home with guns and took him to federal court where he had to sign a payment plan for the 29-year-old school loan.
He was not taken to prison, he was arrested. These are wildly different actions. Nowhere in the article do the strings "prison", "jail", "gaol", "cell", "penitentiary" or any other synonym for prison appear.
There is plenty of discussion elsewhere in the HN comments on what may have led to this arrest.
In the video he said he was placed in a 4x4 cell for an hour before being taken to a judge. He said no one read his rights or allowed him to get representation.
> Aker said he was put in the back of a truck and placed in a cell at the federal building in downtown Houston.
> Aker told The News that he was ordered to pay $5,700 for the loan, including interest. However, Aker was also ordered to pay for the cost of the morning arrest — nearly $1,300.
> If he didn't pay that amount by March 1, he said, he was told he would be arrested again.
Wonder what will happen when he's arrested again when he can't come up with $7000 in two weeks.
So, a courthouse cell is a very different thing than being imprisoned. It's reasonable to assume that someone brought to court against their will would not be so willing to stay there.
I have made no statement about the propriety of the actions described in either article, merely observed that this is not a case of sending someone to prison over a debt.
Where in the article did you see that "choice" presented? All that he was compelled to do was show up in court and agree to a payment plan. He might still never pay the debt.
They can order you to pay, and then if you fail to pay, you can be put in jail. This did not happen in this case, but I'm not focusing on a single case. It has happened before in other cases, and I'm talking about the general principal.
Now, as others have pointed out, the court is supposed to decide what you should be able to pay, and thus ideally you are never forced to pay more than you can afford. But the court does make errors and often people don't have equal access to help on the matters, and thus you can end up with people being required to pay more than they have access to. This can end up with them in jail, and thus we do have debtor prisons, even if they aren't quite as bad as debtor prisons of the past.
Just to be clear, if in an example the jailed individual is put in jail for failing to follow a court order, but that court order was to repay a debt resulting from a loan, would you accept that example? If not, where is the difference between that and the example you are requesting?
In this case a debt leads to a recurring pay or appear judgment that requires a monthly court appearance if payment cannot be made, and the arrest is made for failing the court appearance and not failing the payment. Close, but not exactly what I wanted.
In the opening, it is medical bill instead of loan and once again failure to appear, but given that the individual wasn't notified they had to appear it is once again pretty close. But later on it gives this line:
>or if the judge deems that the debtor is “willfully” not paying the debt, the judge may write a warrant for the debtor’s arrest on a charge of “contempt of court.”
So if the judge thinks the person can pay and they don't, they go to jail. It also brings up the 1983 case of Bearden v. Georgia which does allow imprisonment if the person is judged unwilling, but not unable, to pay. Do we assume the court is 100% perfect in these judgments?
Took a little searching because of all the websites focusing on debt resulting from anything criminal (I was purposefully not bringing up those results).
>In Illinois and southwest Indiana, some judges jail debtors for missing court-ordered debt payments. In extreme cases, people stay in jail until they raise a minimum payment. In January, a judge sentenced a Kenney, Ill., man "to indefinite incarceration" until he came up with $300 toward a lumber yard debt.
>In Minnesota, judges have issued arrest warrants for people who owe as little as $85
>Three debt buyers -- Unifund CCR Partners, Portfolio Recovery Associates Inc. and Debt Equities LLC -- accounted for 15 percent of all debt-related arrest warrants issued in Minnesota since 2005, court data show. The debt buyers also file tens of thousands of other collection actions in the state, seeking court orders to make people pay. The debts -- often five or six years old -- are purchased from companies like cellphone providers and credit card issuers, and cost a few cents on the dollar. Using automated dialing equipment and teams of lawyers, the debt-buyer firms try to collect the debt, plus interest and fees. A firm aims to collect at least twice what it paid for the debt to cover costs. Anything beyond that is profit.
All in all, it does seem the majority of cases I found were for failure to appear to a hearing (even though this could be caused by not being notified of a hearing or being required to repeatedly attend hearings and eventually missing one), but as the article points out that in a few places they don't even need that formality.
Some of these articles are unclear, but it seems that most of them continue to miss the nuanced difference between jailed for failing to pay a debt and failing to respond to a court summons. The Minnesota cases seem to be the latter—people arrested for failing to come to a court hearing.
The fact remains that prison for debt is illegal in the United States and you are astronomically unlikely to ever end up arrested for debts (especially if you always respond to summons). It seems that in the rare cases where someone actually is arrested in connection with debt they are in for a day or two at most.
There are serious problems with law enforcement in this country (civil asset forfeiture, rampant abuse of power, etc.) but I don't think debtor's prisons are one of them. People aren't rotting away in jail for unpaid debts.
Really suspiciously light on details. This sounds like a judge issued a bench warrant and he ignored it (didn't go to court on the date he was supposed to go to court). A bench warrant us essentially an order to appear before a court under pain of arrest. If you ignore it, the law enforcement agency with the appropriate jurisdiction (in this case, U.S Marshals) will go "encourage" you to show up.
A student loan debt may be the initial reason for the bench warrant (somebody may have tried to collect and the court issued a summons to get him to show up at court and explain why he isn't paying) --- but all he had to do to avoid the problem was to show up... not necessarily pay.
Invoking the blunt hammer of armed enforcers is an unnecessary act. Any of the debtor's current and future wages can just as easily be garnished with the same stroke of a pen.
"Accounts payable" doesn't have quite the same ring to it. But it doesn't change what it is. If you owe someone something, that's a debt, regardless of whether it was an unpaid fine or a financial loan.
I'm a conservative and I'd adamantly disagree that "most liberals" don't think you should pay back loans. But I could be wrong - it's totally possible that most liberals buy cars in cash, only rent instead of purchasing property, etc. That's totally plausible.
Call me a right-wing loony ... but why aren't we questioning why the government is giving out loans in the first place. Since the proliferation of government student loans in the last 30 years the cost of higher education has gone up significantly. The loans aren't working and enforcing them is a no-win situation.
Because the alternative is to offer the poor no opportunity to improve their financial situation through education. Permanent hopeless underclasses do not make for a stable society.
No the alternative was to have properly capped student loans to restrain the cost growth, instead of feeding an extreme inflation cycle by enabling an out-of-proportion growth of those loans.
The solution was trivially easy: lock student loan growth to the CPI. Instead the US Government drastically inflated the cost of college by funding student loans far beyond the rate of inflation and with zero concern for the potential to be paid back (perfect setup for a bubble and crash). Universities proceeded to go on an epic and unnecessary building and administration expansion spree, vaporizing hundreds of billions of dollars. All courtesy of the US Government's access to practically unlimited free money (the loaned out sum of which it's now yielding a higher profit on than the combined profit of JP Morgan and Wells Fargo; one of the greatest slush funds in world history).
Per peter303[1] and Google, a Judgment Debtor Examination in federal court is pursuant to Rule 69 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure and local rules authorizing magistrates (non-judge judges) to conduct examinations of judgment debtors.
Also see JUDGMENT CREDITOR: MOTION TO COMPEL- SAMPLE OF AUTHORITIES[2] from the US DOJ:
In United States v. Teeple, 286 F.3d 1047 (8th Cir. 2002), the IRS served a summons on an individual taxpayer, because he had failed to file tax returns. When the taxpayer failed to comply with the summons, the United States filed suit to enforce. The district court ordered the summons enforced over the taxpayer's Fifth Amendment objection under the act of production doctrine. The taxpayer was held in contempt for not complying with the enforcement order and was incarcerated.
73 comments
[ 3.4 ms ] story [ 129 ms ] threadThe US Marshals enforce (federal) court orders. He was subject to a court order mandating the payment of a debt. It's not like he fell into arrears and they "just showed up". If it was a mortgage debt, or an eviction proceeding, typically it'd be the local sheriff.
No story.
It's extremely common for someone to owe a very large, possibly non-dischargable debt (as a result of a criminal fine, lawsuit, alimony, child support, etc), and the court order is something to the effect of "pay $100 / mo", even if this would never actually pay off the debt.
[1] http://www.thestar.com/entertainment/television/2011/03/11/c...
They could have forgiven the debt and come out ahead. Or they could have garnished his wages, or seized his assets and got their money while spending very little.
I think use of the police force to enforce private loan contracts is short-sighted based on the ham-fisted overuse of incarceration as punishment in our legal system. Interest rates are already built into the loan instrument to compensate lenders for the risk of nonpayment, while this practice is just kicking someone when they're down...
Isn't this pretty much the argument for law enforcement in general? I doubt it's ever "cost effective" to have police respond to say, noise complaints or minor acts of theft, but the goal is to show people that are consequences for breaking the laws or going against court orders.
Whereas kicking someone when they are down (i.e. already can't pay) is cruel and unusual, I agree that making an example of willful nonpayment makes sense, but that shouldn't be done at the expense of taxpayers(/no need for police involvement). That's why wage garnishment and other tools already exist for lenders to use with a simple court order. If the government foots the bill of enforcement, rather than the lenders footing the bill of wage garnishment intervention and court costs, then it will get represented in taxes rather than loan interest rates, which privatizes the gains (loan payments) and publicizes the losses (enforcement costs). The other side effect is that it subverts supply/demand based pricing of education based on student loan interest rates, which props up higher education price inflation.
And in particular $1500 owed since 1987, almost 30 years ago. Now of course we don't know when the last payment was but it makes sense that they would pull an enforcement list based on age of debt and also perhaps smaller amounts where it was clear that the debtor was making no attempt to pay off the debt.
However, if some Feds showed up on my front porch after 30 years, I'd probably make sure I pay it off promptly. Going to jail or paying off my student loan? No contest there what I would do.
That is itself absurd. As a private person you can really only ask courts to put liens on property (or garnishes on income) to get your money. You essentially must identify specific property you own due to their lack of payment as not paying you isn't a crime.
> It's not like he fell into arrears and they "just showed up". If it was a mortgage debt, or an eviction proceeding, typically it'd be the local sheriff.
No, they interfere to allow property to be taken by its rightful owner as decided by a court. If you don't struggle to stay in a house you are not arrested when evicted.
Would I be wrong in thinking all US Marshals would be armed at all times, and the article is trying to make this sound like a SWAT raid?
Not that I condone this method of debt collecting - the article seems very light on details. I want to assume that they wrote letters etc before they sent in federal police in order to collect debts.
(UK resident)
Now if the story was "man from local government loan office showed up at door nicely requesting payment" it wouldn't have the necessary tv news story impact nor would it get the attention and the cooperation of the debtor.
Also, I realize in this case he was just arrested and not imprisoned. I wasn't speaking to just this exact case.
The arrest wasn't for debt either, it was for ignoring a court order.
I guess if you don't think there should be any legal mechanism to address non payment of debts then courts shouldn't be involved, but refusing or otherwise failing to participate in the legal process is not the same thing as just failing to pay a debt.
The, as in specifying a specific arrest. As I said, I'm talking in general, not in this particular case.
People are getting dragged to court because they have failed to answer a court order, but they aren't getting dragged to court and then tossed in jail because they stopped paying their credit card or mortgage.
Which hey, those are some pretty shitty situations, but why aren't they appearing in court when ordered?
So people aren't put in jail for failing to follow court orders that require them to pay money? That goes against the numerous news reports I've read of that happening. Now, some portion of those jailed may have the means to pay and choose not to. I would guess a large portion falls into that group. But I am highly doubtful that it is 100%.
>Which hey, those are some pretty shitty situations, but why aren't they appearing in court when ordered?
Based on another post I made, it appears that it can happen because they aren't notified because the official process to notify them only goes so far and if they have an old address or some incorrect information, you may never receive the summons.
This comment mentions houses surviving bankruptcy in Florida:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11110139
(I think some exception is reasonable, but not a huge one)
And then on the other side of it people are being kept from working because they owe petty fines. It's obviously not just.
https://www.themarshallproject.org/2015/02/24/debtors-prison...
It's a good programme, and worth a lsiten. (As are others in the series!)
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b05pqskm
> Are excessive traffic fines and debtors' jails fuelling community tensions in suburban Missouri? Claire Bolderson reports on a network of ninety separate cities in St Louis County, most of which have their own courts and police forces. Critics say that their size makes them financially unviable and allege that some of them boost their incomes by fining their own citizens and locking them up when they can't pay.
> This edition of Crossing Continents goes out and about in St Louis County to meet the people who say they are victims of a system which sees arrest warrants issued for relatively minor misdemeanours. Many of the victims are poor and black. The programme also takes us into the courts, and out onto the freeways with some of the County's police, who say they are upholding the law and promoting road safety.
> The US government is not so sure. One of the towns in question is Ferguson where riots erupted after a white police officer shot a young black man dead last summer. In a recent report on the riots, the Department of Justice concluded that the Ferguson police had been stopping people for no good reason. It said they were putting revenue before public safety.
> Claire Bolderson investigates how widespread the practice is and considers the impact on relations between citizens and the authorities that govern them.
http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/crime-and-courts/muni-cou...
I think the problems are deeper than how much of a municipal budget can come from fines though.
The court should have ordered the seizure of bank assets to cover the debt. In no way should owning money ever result in jail time, fines, judgements or otherwise.
He was certainly compelled to appear in court (at what is probably a great waste of taxpayer resources), but after that appearance, I don't see where he would be detained if he didn't agree to pay the debt.
> He says seven deputy US Marshals showed up at his home with guns and took him to federal court where he had to sign a payment plan for the 29-year-old school loan.
He was not taken to prison, he was arrested. These are wildly different actions. Nowhere in the article do the strings "prison", "jail", "gaol", "cell", "penitentiary" or any other synonym for prison appear.
There is plenty of discussion elsewhere in the HN comments on what may have led to this arrest.
> Aker said he was put in the back of a truck and placed in a cell at the federal building in downtown Houston.
> Aker told The News that he was ordered to pay $5,700 for the loan, including interest. However, Aker was also ordered to pay for the cost of the morning arrest — nearly $1,300.
> If he didn't pay that amount by March 1, he said, he was told he would be arrested again.
Wonder what will happen when he's arrested again when he can't come up with $7000 in two weeks.
I have made no statement about the propriety of the actions described in either article, merely observed that this is not a case of sending someone to prison over a debt.
Where in the article did you see that "choice" presented? All that he was compelled to do was show up in court and agree to a payment plan. He might still never pay the debt.
The court can compel you to appear court and explain yourself, but they can't throw you in jail for not paying.
All they compelled him to do was sign a payment plan (which he can and likely will ignore).
Now, as others have pointed out, the court is supposed to decide what you should be able to pay, and thus ideally you are never forced to pay more than you can afford. But the court does make errors and often people don't have equal access to help on the matters, and thus you can end up with people being required to pay more than they have access to. This can end up with them in jail, and thus we do have debtor prisons, even if they aren't quite as bad as debtor prisons of the past.
That's the thing: I have never heard of a single case where someone was imprisoned for not paying debts in the modern United States.
Instead of talking in the abstract, please provide a single citation of someone imprisoned for failing to pay back a loan.
However, being arrested for failing to appear in court or otherwise being in contempt of court would not qualify.
In this case a debt leads to a recurring pay or appear judgment that requires a monthly court appearance if payment cannot be made, and the arrest is made for failing the court appearance and not failing the payment. Close, but not exactly what I wanted.
https://www.themarshallproject.org/2015/02/24/debtors-prison...
In the opening, it is medical bill instead of loan and once again failure to appear, but given that the individual wasn't notified they had to appear it is once again pretty close. But later on it gives this line:
>or if the judge deems that the debtor is “willfully” not paying the debt, the judge may write a warrant for the debtor’s arrest on a charge of “contempt of court.”
So if the judge thinks the person can pay and they don't, they go to jail. It also brings up the 1983 case of Bearden v. Georgia which does allow imprisonment if the person is judged unwilling, but not unable, to pay. Do we assume the court is 100% perfect in these judgments?
>http://www.startribune.com/in-jail-for-being-in-debt/9569261...
Took a little searching because of all the websites focusing on debt resulting from anything criminal (I was purposefully not bringing up those results).
>In Illinois and southwest Indiana, some judges jail debtors for missing court-ordered debt payments. In extreme cases, people stay in jail until they raise a minimum payment. In January, a judge sentenced a Kenney, Ill., man "to indefinite incarceration" until he came up with $300 toward a lumber yard debt.
>In Minnesota, judges have issued arrest warrants for people who owe as little as $85
>Three debt buyers -- Unifund CCR Partners, Portfolio Recovery Associates Inc. and Debt Equities LLC -- accounted for 15 percent of all debt-related arrest warrants issued in Minnesota since 2005, court data show. The debt buyers also file tens of thousands of other collection actions in the state, seeking court orders to make people pay. The debts -- often five or six years old -- are purchased from companies like cellphone providers and credit card issuers, and cost a few cents on the dollar. Using automated dialing equipment and teams of lawyers, the debt-buyer firms try to collect the debt, plus interest and fees. A firm aims to collect at least twice what it paid for the debt to cover costs. Anything beyond that is profit.
All in all, it does seem the majority of cases I found were for failure to appear to a hearing (even though this could be caused by not being notified of a hearing or being required to repeatedly attend hearings and eventually missing one), but as the article points out that in a few places they don't even need that formality.
The fact remains that prison for debt is illegal in the United States and you are astronomically unlikely to ever end up arrested for debts (especially if you always respond to summons). It seems that in the rare cases where someone actually is arrested in connection with debt they are in for a day or two at most.
There are serious problems with law enforcement in this country (civil asset forfeiture, rampant abuse of power, etc.) but I don't think debtor's prisons are one of them. People aren't rotting away in jail for unpaid debts.
A student loan debt may be the initial reason for the bench warrant (somebody may have tried to collect and the court issued a summons to get him to show up at court and explain why he isn't paying) --- but all he had to do to avoid the problem was to show up... not necessarily pay.
http://www.nbcnews.com/feature/in-plain-sight/sentenced-debt...
Whilst this case may not be like that, it's still quite worrisome that these kinds of things happen to people.
Also, the core problem of debtors prison applies in the case of fines (how can you pay while you are in jail/prison).
In its majestic equality, the law forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, beg in the streets and steal loaves of bread.
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Anatole_France
http://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/the-new-bill-collecto...
>Please avoid introducing classic flamewar topics unless you have something genuinely new to say about them.
This is a pretty classic example of a flamewar topic, and doesn't add anything of substance to the conversation besides uncharitable bait.
The solution was trivially easy: lock student loan growth to the CPI. Instead the US Government drastically inflated the cost of college by funding student loans far beyond the rate of inflation and with zero concern for the potential to be paid back (perfect setup for a bubble and crash). Universities proceeded to go on an epic and unnecessary building and administration expansion spree, vaporizing hundreds of billions of dollars. All courtesy of the US Government's access to practically unlimited free money (the loaned out sum of which it's now yielding a higher profit on than the combined profit of JP Morgan and Wells Fargo; one of the greatest slush funds in world history).
Also see JUDGMENT CREDITOR: MOTION TO COMPEL- SAMPLE OF AUTHORITIES[2] from the US DOJ:
In United States v. Teeple, 286 F.3d 1047 (8th Cir. 2002), the IRS served a summons on an individual taxpayer, because he had failed to file tax returns. When the taxpayer failed to comply with the summons, the United States filed suit to enforce. The district court ordered the summons enforced over the taxpayer's Fifth Amendment objection under the act of production doctrine. The taxpayer was held in contempt for not complying with the enforcement order and was incarcerated.
[1] http://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/the-new-bill-collecto... [2] http://www.justice.gov/sites/default/files/tax/legacy/2006/0...