Different Day, Same Shit.

Millions of Americans expect to go about their day without worrying about a simple traffic stop effectively ruining the rest of their lives. They don't expect to be incarcerated and face thousands of dollars in fines for trivial offenses, but it happens:

Three years ago, Gina Ray, who is now 31 and unemployed, was fined $179 for speeding. She failed to show up at court (she says the ticket bore the wrong date), so her license was revoked.

When she was next pulled over, she was, of course, driving without a license. By then her fees added up to more than $1,500. Unable to pay, she was handed over to a private probation company and jailed — charged an additional fee for each day behind bars.

For that driving offense, Ms. Ray has been locked up three times for a total of 40 days and owes $3,170, much of it to the probation company. Her story, in hardscrabble, rural Alabama, where Krispy Kreme promises that “two can dine for $5.99,” is not about innocence.

It is, rather, about the mushrooming of fines and fees levied by money-starved towns across the country and the for-profit businesses that administer the system. The result is that growing numbers of poor people, like Ms. Ray, are ending up jailed and in debt for minor infractions.

“With so many towns economically strapped, there is growing pressure on the courts to bring in money rather than mete out justice,” said Lisa W. Borden, a partner in Baker, Donelson, Bearman, Caldwell & Berkowitz, a large law firm in Birmingham, Ala., who has spent a great deal of time on the issue. “The companies they hire are aggressive. Those arrested are not told about the right to counsel or asked whether they are indigent or offered an alternative to fines and jail. There are real constitutional issues at stake.”

In a 2010 study, the Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University School of Law examined the fee structure in the 15 states — including California, Florida and Texas — with the largest prison populations. It asserted: “Many states are imposing new and often onerous ‘user fees’ on individuals with criminal convictions. Yet far from being easy money, these fees impose severe — and often hidden — costs on communities, taxpayers and indigent people convicted of crimes. They create new paths to prison for those unable to pay their debts and make it harder to find employment and housing as well as to meet child support obligations.”

The New York Times article goes on to describe how the courts are turning to private companies to handle probation services and fee collection, and how these companies are making their earnings off the back of the poor who are fined, charged and sentenced. In short, the law enforcement and judicial arms are again being used as a profit center for private companies and the officials who take their slice of the proceeds.

Historically speaking, this public/private profiteering at the expense of ordinary Americans lacking in the resources needed to do anything about it has had its greatest effect on the black American community. Today, Americans of all stripes who often don't have the means to take care of expensive fines or discrepancies in paperwork are now being placed into a form of debt peonage, which entails a cycle of stacked fees and incarceration for not paying those fees, many of which were accrued while they were incarcerated.

There's nothing new under this sun. In December 1865, Congress adopted the Thirteenth Amendment, one of three "Reconstruction-era Amendments." This amendment was principally responsible for officially outlawing slavery as experienced by millions of people prior to and during the Civil War:

Section 1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.
Section 2. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

Please note the highlighted phrase, as it plays a big role in the emergence of the Convict Lease system.

In the post-Reconstruction era of the Deep South, the relative new-found freedom of millions of ex-slaves and other black Americans were sharply curtailed by newly-established Jim Crow laws and Black Codes all across the south. Meanwhile, industry was replacing the cotton industry as an economic driver, which meant moneyed interests were constantly in search of cheap or damn-near-free labor. Government officials began using vagrancy laws and other minor violations to issue steep fines and issue lengthy sentences to poor black American men and a few of their white counterparts. These people would then be pressed into labor and leased to various corporations and entrepreneurs until they "completed their sentences" or manage to pay their debts.

Douglass Blackmon's definitive book on this issue, "Slavery by Another Name," sums up the issue thus:

Under laws enacted specifically to intimidate blacks, tens of thousands of African Americans were arbitrarily arrested, hit with outrageous fines, and charged for the costs of their own arrests. With no means to pay these ostensible “debts,” prisoners were sold as forced laborers to coal mines, lumber camps, brickyards, railroads, quarries and farm plantations. Thousands of other African Americans were simply seized by southern landowners and compelled into years of involuntary servitude. Government officials leased falsely imprisoned blacks to small-town entrepreneurs, provincial farmers, and dozens of corporations—including U.S. Steel Corp.—looking for cheap and abundant labor. Armies of "free" black men labored without compensation, were repeatedly bought and sold, and were forced through beatings and physical torture to do the bidding of white masters for decades after the official abolition of American slavery.

In short, the clause "except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted" was used as a gaping loophole as a way to revive a form of forced labor, not just for the benefit of moneyed interests who indeed benefited financially, but as a sop to a people born and bred to believe their black counterparts were naturally lazy and that only work via forced labor was the way to keep them "productive." This form of debt peonage was thought to have been done away with after World War II, but it managed to get a new lease on life during the 1980s. It currently survives thanks in part to the proliferation of private judicial services that manage everything from prisons to probation and drug testing.

In an era where an outright refusal to properly fund the courts system collides with a ragged economy and a continuing thirst for punitive justice measures, private judicial services are flourishing, enticing states with a seemingly low initial overhead and the promise of savings to both governments and taxpayers. However, recent studies have shown the supposed savings to be negligible, if not non-existent. As noted in the article, many jurisdictions are using fees and surcharges as a new form of funding, usually in lieu of slashed state and local funding.

There's also the risk of corruption among state and federal judicial members and these private corporations. This comment from Eric D. sheds light on the corruption that occurs when private profits collude with harsh public punishment:

As I mentioned in my earlier text, this is just the tip of the iceberg in Alabama. In the county adjacent to where Childersburg is located, Shelby County, the only Judge in that county to hear felony cases has set up a "work release." This "work release" which is in fact a jail is run by the judge's sister-in-law. You can be incarcerated there for anything from child support or speeding tickets up to drug distribution.

The deal is you are jailed and allowed to leave only for work or some project that the judge's sister in law decides to use her free labor for. If you can find a job under their many constraints then your entire paycheck must be made payable to jailers and at a later date the judge's sister in law will deduct 40% of your GROSS check, subtract whatever they choose for fines and fees including charges for drug tests that they administer at will and you get the difference if there is anything left.

Because it is private it does not fall under Dept of Corrections guidelines. These inmates are required to purchase their own food although in theory bread and ham is given once a day. I personally know a man who spent 24 months incarcerated eating ham sandwiches every day, only to find out that he was held an extra 7 months after his restitution was paid but was not remitted by the judge's sister in law. And guess who hears any complaints? That's right, the same judge who made sure his sister in law runs the place. The Good Ole Boy system is still just fine in AL.

The corruption is endemic, even at the juvenile level. In 2011, a Pennsylvania judge was sentenced to 28 years in prison for shipping over 4,000 kids, some as young as ten, off to two privately run youth detention centers, in exchange for over $1 million in kickbacks from the private prison company charged with running the facilities.

Many private prisons also receive federal funding for housing and feeding inmates, which these prisons often do in a substandard manner. Others facilitate overcrowding and poor staffing to cut costs and pocket profits. One private firm actually required one state to have a 90-percent occupancy rate before it could take advantage of a sweetheart deal:

The proposal seeks to build upon a deal reached last fall in which the company purchased the 1,798-bed Lake Erie Correctional Institution from the state of Ohio for $72.7 million. Ohio officials lauded the September transaction, saying that private management of the facility would save a projected $3 million annually.

Linda Janes, chief of staff for the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction, said the purchase came at time when the state was facing a $8 billion shortfall. The $72.7 million prison purchase was aimed at helping to fill a $188 million deficit within the corrections agency.

Ohio's deal requires the state to maintain a 90% occupancy rate, but Janes said that provision remains in effect for 18 months — not 20 years — before it can be renegotiated. As part of the deal, Ohio pays the company a monthly fee, totaling $3.8 million per year.

It's little wonder the arrest rate for young black males in the United States remains at least eight times higher than their white counterparts. It's hard trying to maintain an ideal level of occupancy. It's also a part of why the War on Drugs (also known as the War on Weed) is slated to continue for the foreseeable future. After all, there has to be some way to keep the prisons full.

The whole idea of having your finances, job prospects, reputation and personal freedom boned thanks to fines, surcharges and fees that stack up and prove financially insurmountable should scare just about anyone. However, some people don't see any of this as that big of a deal. After all, you should have obeyed the law. Problem is, there are so many laws on the books today that even the most innocent and law-abiding citizen can get fined or go to jail over a law he or she wasn't even aware existed.

This is neo-peonage, in a nutshell. Lower and middle-class Americans who are often one or two paychecks away from poverty are financially devastated by fines and fees. If they can't pay up in time, they're put in jail and often put to work in a revitalized Convict Lease System for extraordinarily cheap. If B.B. Comer was to somehow time-travel to today's Childersburg to see the spectacle as told by Eric D., he'd be right at home with what he'd find.

The New York Times has a rather thorough article on the Jefferson County, Alabama bankruptcy and the sewer debacle that started it all. I covered this in a previous blog post, which also contains a link to the even more detailed Rolling Stone article authored months ago. I guess since the NYT had its content ripped by those bastards over at Fortune, they had to make up for lost eyeballs with a quick rehash of old news.

Meanwhile, governments all over the globe are responding to economic crises with resounding cries of Austerity™. In a quaint three-bedroom villa on the outskirts of the European Union suburbs, Daddy Germany and Momma France want Greece and its fellow PIIGS siblings (Portugal, Ireland, Italy and Spain) to eat a piping hot, value-sized portion of Austerity™ for dinner, on the auspices of it being healthy for them. Greece set itself on fire at the kitchen table in protest, while the rest of the PIIGS went to their rooms without supper. But seriously, Greece is hurting in a bad way. Deep in debt, with no way of practicing their traditional solution of currency devaluation (because Euro) and with tax evasion a national pastime, the Greek government is busy cutting whatever scraps of fat they can find to stay afloat, even with Germany secretly wanting the country to emancipate itself declare bankruptcy and get the hell out of the house Euro.

Austerity™, according to conservative fixtures who fancy themselves as being learned in economic matters, supposedly works by drastically cutting worker pay and benefits, social services deemed unnecessary and even essential services to the bone, not to mention helpful programs that are considered "entitlements" by the conservative set. Spending is drastically lowered, while taxes are also lowered or at least held at the same rates. In other words, it's the government pretending to budget like an ordinary household of five.

In the case of the United States, it's a household of five where the hubby only spends his money on guns and countless rounds of drinks for his wealthy buddies from the office. Apparently, if he shows he can flash a little cash and kisses enough wealthy buddy ass, he thinks they'll let him in the country club and they'll all be BFFs 4eva. Meanwhile, the wife works, but nearly every single dime she makes winds up in hubby's hands. They barely have enough for the necessities and niceties like new clothes for the kids or a decent night out for the wife are deemed "entitlements." The family trucks no handouts and despite scraping by on the thinnest margins, sincerely believes that if it just cuts back on the food and the utility usage, they'll be able to put back enough money to get themselves back on track again, despite hubby getting his paycheck cut once again and all of their savings going towards more guns for hubby's collection and more rounds of drinks for the wealthy boys back at the pub.

So what does Austerity™ have to do with a county that's knee-deep in debt accrued from what turned out to be a massive fraudulent subprime loan?

Well, when you think about it, the later stages of Austerity™ involve the family selling off the prized family silver and jewelry. For countries, those jewels are public infrastructure, already built and just waiting to be sold to creditors and private interests for literally pennies on the dollar. In other words, Austerity™ eventually turns a country into a glorified estate sale.

For Jefferson County, that may involve selling off portions or even the entirety of the Jefferson County sewer system. Now there's a public asset that a private company can use to make money hand over fist. And that's the whole point - a private entity taking hold of a formerly public asset that features a built-in captive consumer base and a license to literally print money. It's Comcast (or AT&T) sipping a steroid/crack smoothie infused with meth crystals for added punch.

Conservatives are happy about how this shit is well on its way to hitting the proverbial fan, as it supposedly validates the continuing cries for "small government," which, if you're reading the news these days, turns out to be a government that funds moral busybodyism (banning abortion and gay marriage), wealth worship (more tax cuts to wealthy individuals and corporations, with looser or nonexistent regulations) and unbridled aggression (see our military funding sometime) while condemning and defunding things that actually help people (national healthcare, social programs, etc). It's a government run on the Just World fallacy with Dickensian logic. Many of the suburban and rural collapse fetishists are banking on the county keeling over (and the city of Birmingham along with it*) just for the validation of their world view such an event would bring - "the county was a liberal shit pool that blew up because it wouldn't follow the hallowed way of conservative 'small government'."

One thing that pisses people off to no end about our judicial system is the lopsided and disproportionate punishments that happen for a variety of reasons. For those on the lower end of the economic totem pole, judicial punishments are a lot harsher than for those who are well-heeled and well-connected. Those disparities only grow larger with each passing day.

On one side of the coin, there's Anita McLemore, mother of two teens who wanted to keep them from going hungry. With prior state drug convictions, the possibility of being eligible for food stamps was slim to none, so she did what most mortgage lending companies did to keep the big bucks rolling in: lie, and hope no one paid attention to that lie.

Of course, it didn't work. And despite paying back all of the $4000+ in food stamp benefits, a federal judge decided to send a message and deliver a harsh three-year sentence. If having several drug priors didn't trim down her opportunities for financial advancement, then this federal conviction all but slammed the door on them. And of course, one would have to wonder if this woman had been a white mother of two young kids, would she have been free to go after paying only restitution, if she even had to do that.

On the other side of the coin, you have former Citigroup CFO Gary Crittenden and investor relations head Arthur Tildesley, Jr. essentially fined $100,000 and $80,000 respectively for lying about information contained in shareholder disclosures by the SEC. And then there's Campus Crest CEO Ted Rollins, who repeatedly violated court orders pertaining to his divorce from his then-wife, Sherry Carroll Rollins, and successfully manipulated child support and alimony judgments that were so paltry, his ex-wife and daughters are now on food stamps. Good thing she doesn't have drug convictions on her record.

The point is, these people are well-connected and well-funded that most, if not all crimes that don't involve pissing off someone who ranks higher on the totem pole can be made to "go away" with the right amount of legal pressure, media manipulation and favors called in. Meanwhile, those with little to no means are slammed and slammed hard by a legal system that is all too willing to keep poors locked into poverty and even exploit them during their entrapment in the legal system, shortly before curb-stomping them out of existence.

Last year the Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), the nation’s largest private prison company, received $74 million of taxpayers’ money to run immigration detention centers. Their largest facility in Lumpkin, Georgia, receives $200 a night for each of the 2,000 detainees it holds, and rakes in yearly profits between $35 million and $50 million.

Prisoners held in this remote facility depend on the prison’s phones to communicate with their lawyers and loved ones. Exploiting inmates’ need, CCA charges detainees here $5 per minute to make phone calls. Yet the prison only pays inmates who work at the facility $1 a day. At that rate, it would take five days to pay for just one minute.

I'd have to wonder if you're in debt to these people when your sentence is up, do you still remain incarcerated until you've paid off that debt? If I didn't know any better, I'd say what we have here is a new form of debt peonage that's far more insidious than any credit card or title loan trap. It's no wonder some judges are eager to enact harsher sentences for lesser crimes -- it makes them look like they're tough on crime while receiving kickbacks from the private prisons.

Conservative Law-and-Order Troll: Or maybe they're just doing their jobs.

The job of the judiciary is to interpret the laws of the land, not to act as a pipeline that leads directly into privatized prisons and debt peonage.

The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons.

While the United States is still somewhat civilized in that metric, in comparison to places like, say, Mexico, Turkey or North Korea, we're doing our damnedest as a nation to change that, for the worst. The U.S. continues to trend southward on the list of "first-world nations you'd actually want to live in." When it comes to healthcare, education, advances in technology, per-capita income, amount of leisure time and general happiness, we're falling farther and farther behind our European and Asian contemporaries. At least we'll always be numero uno when it comes to military strength and expenditures...

When kids talk about their schools, quite a few will liken them to prisons. Not because they just don't plain like school (who does when you're a kid?), but because the schools have, for the most part, have replicated the rigid, regimented and highly controlled environment that resembles most maximum security prison environments. In many cases, you can thank zero-tolerance measures and building architects who design most new schools to be cinder-block enclaves with limited access and limited distractions. That means no windows and few entry and exit points save for the fire escapes. And they'd get rid of those, too, if they could.

I had the pleasure of going to a high school that was built in a hillside during the late 1950s, as a Cold War-era solution to surviving a nuclear attack and the resultant radiation fallout that followed. It didn't help that it was just a few miles away from a rather important military installation with a lot of stuff that made it nuke-worthy by Soviet standards. As a result, you had a hexagonal structure surrounded by other hexagonal stubs buried in a hillside, with no classroom windows. As this school was quite old by the time I attended, the HVAC and ventilation system was usually FUBAR and any decent temperature or fresh air regulation had to be done by opening the emergency doors in the classrooms that were lucky to have one. However, this school wasn't "urban" enough to warrant metal detectors and the school didn't seem to embrace the "zero-tolerance" policies with the fervor schools do today. Other schools I went to before that were built as most schools were before Brutalist architecture and the need for controlled environments came into vogue.

Not only do you have the buildings as instruments of control, you also have the adherence to class schedules, the assigned lunch seating, the requirement to travel to and from as a group at the appointed times, etc. I understand this is all necessary for young minds that have yet to handle independence with the measure of respect and good judgement that most kids have yet to develop, but I can't help but notice how the entire school environment resembles the corrective institution in a growing number of ways. It's a feeling you can't really put your finger on, but you know it's there.

The need for control and regimentation is manifested by students who act out because they're either bored or frustrated. Since the public school experience is largely regimented out of necessity (or laziness, in many cases), there's no way that a school teacher can fine-tune the curriculum to accommodate a student for whom the standard method of learning simply does not work. Lots of people require hands-on experience and end up doing better in trades and careers that feature tactile and tangible experiences. And since public schools usually lack the funds, will and foresight to identify underlying problems that could result in a miserable school experience for a kid, those problems are either ignored or doped away with copious amounts of Adderall or Ritalin. For others, they act out, and the zero-tolerance policies come into play.

Private schools are a whole 'nother kettle of fish. I had the opportunity to go to quite a few when I was a young kid, specifically a small, church-run school in the middle of a "distressed urban environment." The entire experience was different from any public school I've been to at that point -- the classroom experience was less restrictive and regimented. There was less stress, even though the environment was just as competitive (or far more, in many cases) as other ordinary public schools. Fewer fights, fewer disruptions and more opportunities for a custom-tailored educational experience that actually benefits kids. But it was expensive, and single parents with other household expenditures can't swing the private school bills as well as financially established families, and those are few and far between in most urban areas.

So, where am I going with this? Well, the Tea Party made plenty of public institutions targets in their scheme to dismantle and replace them with privatized entities. Actually, it isn't so much the Tea Party orchestrating this as they are simply the dumbassed foot soldiers doing the bidding of the real power brokers funding the so-called "grassroots" organization. Public schools are one of those targets.
(More after the jump)