US Law on Debt and Imprisonment: Debunking the Myth

In the United States, debtors’ prisons were banned under federal law in 1833. A century and a · half later, in 1983, the Supreme Court affirmed that incarcerating indigent debtors was · unconstitutional under the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection clause. Yet, citizens like · Sanders and Ford are, to this day, routinely jailed after failing to repay debt. Though de jure · debtors’ prisons are a thing of the past, de facto debtors’ imprisonment is not.

In the United States, debtors’ prisons were banned under federal law in 1833. A century and a · half later, in 1983, the Supreme Court affirmed that incarcerating indigent debtors was · unconstitutional under the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection clause. Yet, citizens like · Sanders and Ford are, to this day, routinely jailed after failing to repay debt. Though de jure · debtors’ prisons are a thing of the past, de facto debtors’ imprisonment is not.

As a result of the decentralized nature of American law enforcement and legal and policy differences across states and counties, there are not comprehensive and standardized records documenting incarceration practices, including the practice of debt imprisonment.

II. CRIMINAL JUSTICE DEBT AND RESTRICTIONS ON DEBTORS’ PRISONS · Despite the prohibitions in the United States, individuals are currently · being imprisoned for failure to pay debts.

First author and statistics graduate student Johann Gaebler first became aware of debt imprisonment while an intern at the American Civil Liberties Union in Wisconsin, just after graduating from the College in 2017 with a degree in mathematics. “I didn’t even realize that this existed in the American legal system — that there are still mechanisms for jailing people for unpaid court debts,” said the Griffin Graduate School of Arts and Sciences student.

debtor to the United States imprisoned on a warrant issued from the Treasury Department, and · the debtor would have to have a court judgment issued against them first). ... Debt was a running theme of these private laws. Rather than · simply ban debtors’ prisons, Congress passed private laws to · individually release unfortunate debtor-inmates, provided they · took an oath pledging that they were not hiding their assets.146 · Apart from the fact that these laws failed to tackle the issue

A person shall not be imprisoned for debt on a writ of execution or other process issued from a court of the United States in any State wherein imprisonment for debt has been abolished.

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As Lord Dunedin observed in 1919, it was 'in direct contradistinction to the view of the law in England, that imprisonment was in no sense a satisfaction of the debt'; the purpose for imprisonment for debt was not to discharge the obligation to pay, but rather to act as a compulsitor to force the debtor into revealing any hidden assets.