U.S. citizens in Ohio are being sent to illegal prisons for unpaid debts as little as a few hundred dollars, according to a report released this month by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). Of the 11 Ohio counties investigated for the ACLU study, seven were found to be imprisoning debtors. In Huron County, the jail booking report shows that more than 22 percent of all prison sentences were for unpaid fines or debts.
Despite being illegal since 1833, debtors prisons have become increasingly popular in Ohio, where hundreds are sent to prison every year for outstanding fines. Normally, citizens are allowed to declare bankruptcy as a way to end all action by creditors against them.
Bankruptcies have always been a matter of federal jurisdiction. The U.S. Constitution allows Congress to enact “uniform laws on the subject of bankruptcies throughout the United States.”
Under Chapter 7 proceedings — the most common form of individual bankruptcy — an individual can hand over non-exempt property to a bankruptcy trustee, who then liquidates the property and distributes the proceeds to the debtor’s unpaid creditors. In exchange, the individual is absolved of all debt, assuming they have not committed some tax fraud, such as hiding assets.
“The U.S. Constitution, the Ohio Constitution and Ohio Revised Code all prohibit debtors’ prisons. The law requires that, before jailing anyone for unpaid fines, courts must determine whether an individual is too poor to pay. Jailing a person who is unable to pay violates the law, and yet municipal courts and mayors’ courts across the state continue this draconian practice,” the ACLU reports in “The Outskirts, How Ohio’s Debtors Prisons Are Ruining Lives and Costing Communities.”
For Jack Dawley, the policy has led to misery and hardship as an individual trying to stay sober and correct his previous mistakes.
“At the age of 16, I started experimenting with drugs and alcohol and made some bad decisions,” Dawley said. In the 1990s, his drug and alcohol addictions led to convictions for domestic violence and driving under the influence, resulting in nearly $1,500 in fines and costs in the Norwalk Municipal Court. Jack was also behind on his child support, which led to a three-and-a-half year jail sentence.
“I went to Wisconsin for three and a half years of incarceration,” said Dawley. “Upon my release, I finally made a right decision and chose to stay sober.” Since that day, Jack has made every attempt to turn his life around, staying sober for 14 years and paying what he could of his previous fines.
As a former felon, Dawley struggled to find work and pay back his fines. “It was pretty much a vicious cycle,” Dawley said. “You’d go do your 10 days, and they’d set you up a court date and give you another 90 days to pay or go back to jail … It was hard for me to obtain work, so I fell back into the cycle of going to jail every three months.” This pattern repeated from 2007-2012.
Dawley is just one of hundreds stuck in a seemingly endless cycle of debt and illegal prison sentences. Since 2010, judges signed more than 5,000 arrest warrants in just nine counties to arrest debtors.