It's fascinating to read Dan King writing in The American Conservative to decry "Dickensian debtors' prisons" in the USA — the practice of judges locking up poor people who can't pay fines for petty infractions like traffic tickets.
This phenomenon is indeed a scourge, and has its roots both in systemic racism (racialized people are overpoliced, poorer on average, and get less lenient treatment from the justice system), and mass inequality (the precarity of low-waged work, combined with the elimination of the social safety net, predatory lenders, skyrocketing rents, tuition and health costs has vastly increased the number of people who can't pay their fines).
King's excellent piece is a reminder that conservatism isn't monolithic, and also a good example of the limits on the conservative frame of reference. King can represent a strain of conservatism that decries government overreach and corruption, but he stops short of calling for the regulation of payday lenders, or the creation of Medicare For All, or strong tenants' rights and rent control, or a resurgence in trade unions — any of the remedies that would give the people in debtors' prisons the political clout to fight back, the income to pay fines, and the security to wage a struggle for justice.
The conservative frame of reference doesn't encompass cities starved of funds by anti-tax activism that use fines as a form of regressive taxation.
A good example of the limits to conservatism's ability to grapple with this issue: King rightly points out that taking away a poor person's driver's license likely deprives them of their livelihoods, too, because of the erosion of public transit. But he doesn't call for higher taxes on the wealthy to fund public transit to reduce that precarity. There are lots of ways that poor people can end up without the means to drive themselves to work beyond losing their licenses, and the lack of public transit means that millions are one busted axle away from losing everything.
Furthermore, in 43 states, unpaid fines and fees can lead to a suspect losing his or her driver's license. License suspensions are particularly pervasive in poor communities and communities of color. A study conducted by ProPublica Illinois found that 54 percent of license suspensions in that state occurred in "low income zip codes," and 44 percent occurred in majority-black zip codes, even though only 11 percent of Illinois' total population is black.
When a poor person's license is suspended, it becomes nearly impossible to pay back the fees and fines that are owed in the first place, especially in rural parts of the country with less access to public transit. An American with a suspended license is likely to either lose his or her ability to get to work and thus make money to pay off the debt, or risk additional fines for driving with a suspended license. A 2007 study conducted in New Jersey found that 42 percent of people who had their licenses suspended in the Garden State lost their jobs as a result.
In an April 2018 paper on the impact of driver's license suspensions, the Reason Foundation's James Craven found that in an average case in Michigan the fees to get one's license back could cost $2,118. Such a sum is nearly impossible to pay without steady work. And Michigan is not unique here—across the nation, states charge hundreds and even thousands of dollars for driving without a license.
The Dickensian Return of Debtors' Prisons [Dan King/The American Conservative]
(via Naked Capitalism)
