A Modern-Day Debtor’s Prison in Pennsylvania

“Now I’m going to get a little overwhelmed because it’s like, ‘What do I do?’ And then it’s like, you walk down the street, and you don’t know if you’re going to get picked up, and it’s all that fear. ‘Am I going to go to jail?’ And there’s everything that I just worked so hard for. And it’s like constant fear. It’s like you can’t live. It’s like you can’t breathe,” she said.

Emma Jacobs looks at a “modern-day debtor’s prison” in Montgomery County, Pa. where a judge is sending people to jail for being unable to pay fines. Vic Walczak, legal director for the ACLU of Pennsylvania told Jacobs: “What is perfectly clear under both the U.S. Constitution and the Pennsylvania Rules of Criminal Procedure is that you cannot send someone to jail if they cannot afford to pay the fine, because that’s the equivalent of having a debtor’s prison — of putting someone in jail simply because they’re poor.” Records show that each day in jail was worth about $40 towards their fines, but taxpayers are ultimately paying for it.

Photo: David Wilson

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