Judicially sanctioned extortion rackets

Hannah Rappeleye and Lisa Riordan Seveille write,

In the 1983 case Bearden v. Georgia, the Supreme Court ruled that to jail a probationer for failure to pay a fine without inquiring first into that person’s ability to pay violates the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.

The authors write about rural Alabama, and how probation works when you are poor and get a traffic ticket.

Once a means of allowing convicted offenders to stay out of jail on the condition of good behavior, probation had now become a court-sanctioned tool for debt collection.

Go here to read more about the interminable sentences some debtors receive.

Thanks to Conor Friedersdorf for linking to this story.