From June Of This Year... 'In Jail For Being In Debt' - StarTribune

[WillyT]

In jail for being in debt
By CHRIS SERRES and GLENN HOWATT , Star Tribune staff writers
June 9, 2010

<snip>

As a sheriff's deputy dumped the contents of Joy Uhlmeyer's purse into a sealed bag, she begged to know why she had just been arrested while driving home to Richfield after an Easter visit with her elderly mother.

No one had an answer. Uhlmeyer spent a sleepless night in a frigid Anoka County holding cell, her hands tucked under her armpits for warmth. Then, handcuffed in a squad car, she was taken to downtown Minneapolis for booking. Finally, after 16 hours in limbo, jail officials fingerprinted Uhlmeyer and explained her offense -- missing a court hearing over an unpaid debt. "They have no right to do this to me," said the 57-year-old patient care advocate, her voice as soft as a whisper. "Not for a stupid credit card."

It's not a crime to owe money, and debtors' prisons were abolished in the United States in the 19th century. But people are routinely being thrown in jail for failing to pay debts. In Minnesota, which has some of the most creditor-friendly laws in the country, the use of arrest warrants against debtors has jumped 60 percent over the past four years, with 845 cases in 2009, a Star Tribune analysis of state court data has found.

Not every warrant results in an arrest, but in Minnesota many debtors spend up to 48 hours in cells with criminals. Consumer attorneys say such arrests are increasing in many states, including Arkansas, Arizona and Washington, driven by a bad economy, high consumer debt and a growing industry that buys bad debts and employs every means available to collect.

Whether a debtor is locked up depends largely on where the person lives, because enforcement is inconsistent from state to state, and even county to county.

<snip>

More: http://www.startribune.com/templates/Print_This_Story?sid=95692619

:mad::nuke::mad:

[liberalhistorian]

1. This is particularly egregious in the case of medical debt,

especially for the working poor who often are uninsured, but make too much to qualify for Medicaid and too little to pay for insurance themselves. One illness or injury can leave you owing tens of thousands of dollars that you simply don't have, but the hospitals and doctors don't care at all and just want their dough however they can get it even if it means ruining people already on the edge.

Expect this to get a whole lost worse, since MN was just foolish enough to give the repubs solid control of BOTH houses of its legislature for the first time in a generation.

[ThatsMyBarack]

2. I'm never going to the doctor again.

I don't want to end up in jail because the crooks and liars at Blue Cross won't cover major expenses that ensue.

Seems to me the WRONG people are getting locked up! :mad:

[marmar]

3. A country that allows people to be preyed on like this.......

..... no longer deserves to be called civilized.

[ThomCat]

5. You are exactly right.

:(

We have become a corporate nation, where greed rules, and the people who are prey have no rights. You owe and owe and owe until you can't owe anymore. Then they squeeze you with the full force of the law just to make absolutely sure you can't owe any more.

Any every possible system is designed to make sure you go into debt, so that you are certain to owe those greedy corporations their money. Whether it is medical debt, or education debt, or credit debt because you used a card to survive one of the those other types of crises, somehow or other they'll drag you down and then it begins.

[Catherina]

7. +1 n/t

[readmoreoften]

8. +1

[Nuclear Unicorn]

4. The legal sleight-of-hand comes from the court order to pay the debt

You don't get locked up for debt, you get locked up for disobeying the court.

The rationale is: if you don't enforce the court order than anyone from the loser of a lawsuit to a parent delinquent on child support could just ignore the courts.

Perhaps the rules need to be revisited to more closely define circumstances for this sort of thing.

[apocalypsehow]

6. Debtor's incarceration has been back in the picture for *years*: locking parents who fail to pay

child support has been going on since the '90s. That's when the laws started to be revised in most states (more or less, depending on the state) to allow for such incarceration over a debt - and many genuine liberals and progressives like myself, warned that such a policy was a slippery slope that would eventually lead to things just such as this. I even wrote a letter to the editor about it that got published in a statewide newspaper, and had to change my phone # when the hate calls from angry soccer moms rolled in.

Now, a decade + on, it's for credit card debt; ten years for now, it may well be for not paying your utility bill, or missing a car payment. The road to hell is paved with good intentions, to coin a phrase. Looks like we were proven right. Again.

[defendandprotect]

9. More rule by corporations .... as soverign nations fade away ...!!