IS TO HAVE A TARGET
PAINTED ON YOUR BACK
"In March, the Southern Poverty Law Center filed a federal lawsuit accusing Judicial Correction Services (a private for profit "probation company) and the city of Clanton, Alabama of operating an illegal racketeering scheme to extort money from poor residents.
JCS offers municipal courts its services at no cost to them. People who can’t pay traffic tickets and other minor fines in a lump sum are placed on what is known as “pay-only probation,” and judges assign JCS to collect payments. The company profits from fees it charges – typically $40 a month – to people making payments, prolonging their ordeal and making it more difficult to pay off their debt. Company officials often threaten people with jail to secure payment, and many defendants end up behind bars."
I'm scared to death of ever being poor in this country. And I think all but the infinitely strong should be too.
Somewhere near 45% of the people living well in this country will tell the poor it's their own fault that they are poor, then take a shot at hitting the bulls-eye themselves just like JCS did. They'll try to find to make money off the poor without the slightest twinge of conscience. This is, at least in part, what nearly tipped this country into a second depression. The financial collapse near 2007 started with subprime mortgages, a lot of which that were sold to poor black people, that were adjustable rate mortgages that started at a high rate and then to an even higher rate 1, 2, or 3 years later.
I'm still trying to figure out how banks made that sound good to anybody with a conscience. People desperate for house are desperate for a house. And when subprime started people thought the economy was going to always get better forever. People just assumed they'd get enough raises to cover the adjustment upward. And for a long time a significant number of these subprime mortgage holders were right. They could be gouged and still make the payments. But then the economy took a down turn--like it's supposed to. Economies do not climb, getting better forever. But greedy businessmen who knew better made those loans anyway.
The same kind of greed had to be driving the profit probation system. But how did a for profit probation system ever sound good to anybody who wasn't within the company making a profit? How does a town or city do that to it's citizens?
I hope the SPLC gets the Alabama city itself on the hook for some very large fines. The federal government should let them pay those fines over a long time period too, for a $4000 monthly fee.
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