Report chronicles modern debtors’ prisons in New Hampshire

You might assume, based on our prior discussions of lawsuits over modern day debtors' prison practices in Georgia and Missouri (see here and here) that the practice of jailing people who can't pay court fines and fees is confined to the South.

An ACLU report last week discussing practices in New Hampshire shows otherwise. Among its findings was that "in 2013 New Hampshire judges jailed people who were unable to pay fines and without conducting a meaningful ability-to-pay hearing in an estimated 148 cases. In all of these cases, defendants were sent to jail without representation by counsel."

The whole report is here.

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