The New Debtors' Prison: Why All Americans Are in Danger of Losing Their Freedom

by Christopher B Maselli, Paul Lonardo

Debtors’ prisons might sound like something out of a Dickens novel, but what most Americans do not realize is that they are alive and well in a new and startling form. Today more than 20 percent of the prison population is incarcerated for financial reasons such as failing to pay a fine. This alarming trend not only affects the poor, who are hit particularly hard, but also ensnares the millions of self-identified middle-class people who are struggling to make ends meet.

All across the country people are being fined and even imprisoned for offenses as small as delinquency on student debt or an unpaid parking ticket. However, there is an insidious undercurrent to these practices that the average person might not realize. Many counties depend on a steady supply of citizens to pay fines and court costs in order to make their budgets. Minor vehicle infractions, by design, can rack up hundreds of dollars in charges that go straight to the city’s coffers. Combine this with the fact that many middle-class people cannot handle an unexpected $400 expense and the general lack of awareness about the risk for being repeatedly jailed for failure to pay court costs, probation, and even per day charges for being in jail and you get an endless cycle of men and women either in debt or in prison for debt.

While shocking to some, this system makes up today’s debtors’ prisons. In The New Debtors’ Prison , Christopher Maselli draws from his personal knowledge of the criminal justice system based on his experience on both sides of the prison walls as an attorney as well as a former inmate, to take a hard look at our modern prison system that systematically targets the poor and vulnerable of our society in order to fund the prison-industrial complex.

240 pages, Hardcover

Published May 21, 2019

Reviews

[Jeanette · Rating 2 out of 5]

At points I would have given this 3 stars, and then he insisted on going increasingly bonkers. His definitions and stats information then proceeded off the deep end by the last portions. As the fake and media news so often does, he changes slants and definitions as he goes along. For instead, by the end he is insisting that anyone who owes for grandkids' or children's debt interest is literally "within" a debtor's prison. You just can't see the walls or uniform?? Well, he is making humongous literal jumps in categories.

Nevertheless re the real thing; there are many who for process or court costs or fines or whatever - they will never save or invest enough to pay them. And they do find themselves increasingly "criminal" for being so $$$ less in the fall out. And some of them actually do pay with wait/ sentencing/ prison time or for some work program sequence instead of with monetary paybacks. But it is nothing at all like Dickens' time debtors' prison. Or being sent into exile. Or any of that time's "usuals".

This reminded me of the numerous volumes that have been written in the last 20 years about the numbers of poor innocents being in prisons for pot or personal drug stashes. HUGELY EXAGGERATED at all times but never defined properly to why people are felons and serving time.

Because the truth is that along with the criminal drug charges there are also multiple violence or theft or invasion of some sort charges (body, house, car you name it) accompanying that earn sentencing with incarceration placements. It simply is not ONLY upon the drug charge. Nor are these just about "the debt". So much of this is calling up, down and down, up, IMHO.

Mushy, mushy language, verbose for effusive purposes and almost no reference, sources or proofs that I would consider factual straight numbering.

[Nancy McQueen · Rating 2 out of 5]

Some stuff is valid, but he is very alarmist and shrill about it.