{"id":8159,"date":"2014-11-02T18:50:03","date_gmt":"2014-11-02T23:50:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/crcl\/?p=8159"},"modified":"2016-11-16T19:26:28","modified_gmt":"2016-11-17T00:26:28","slug":"debtors-prisons-in-the-21st-century","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/crcl\/debtors-prisons-in-the-21st-century\/","title":{"rendered":"Debtors’ Prisons in the 21st Century"},"content":{"rendered":"

Theoretically speaking, debtors’ prisons have been explicitly outlawed by the United States Supreme Court since Bearden v. Georgia <\/em>in 1983. \u00a0As a practical matter, however, debtors’ prisons are alive and well. In fact, a 2010 study by the Brennan Center for Justice found that, of the fifteen states with the highest prison populations, all fifteen have jurisdictions that arrest debtors for failure to pay or failure to appear for a debt hearing. \u00a0Although some states have started to take\u00a0legislative action to remedy debt collection procedures,\u00a0the issue is far from resolved.<\/p>\n

Debtors’ prison-type situations are primarily triggered when a debtor fails to respond to a court order.\u00a0 By applying current debt collection\u00a0rules, creditors are able to force debtors into difficult situations.\u00a0 One common method occurs\u00a0when a creditor files\u00a0a series of requests for the debtor’s examination before the court. \u00a0These examinations often include receiving additional information for the creditor such as the debtor’s bank or employment records. \u00a0If a judge honors these requests, which is common in creditor-debtor situations, then the debtor is forced to appear before the\u00a0court on multiple occasions for\u00a0the examinations. \u00a0People in debtors’ prison-type situations\u00a0are often unable to take off of work on several occasions, which results in the failure to attend one of the examinations.\u00a0 Thus, once a debtor fails to attend, the creditor seeks a body attachment forcing the imprisonment of the debtor until the next hearing. Once the debtor is imprisoned, however, he or she may pay bail, which is often the amount owed to the creditor and therefore typically turned over to the creditor upon the debtor’s payment.<\/p>\n

As consumer debt continues to\u00a0increase nationwide, debtors’ prison issues will continue to arise unless state legislatures intervene.\u00a0\u00a0For more information about debtors’ prisons, check out this recent Huffington Post article<\/a>, as well as the Brennan Center for Justice’s study<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Theoretically speaking, debtors’ prisons have been explicitly outlawed by the United States Supreme Court since Bearden v. Georgia in 1983. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":103,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":true,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,44],"tags":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-8159","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-amicus","category-courts"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/peZrWS-27B","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/crcl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8159","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/crcl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/crcl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/crcl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/103"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/crcl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8159"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/crcl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8159\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/crcl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8159"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/crcl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8159"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/crcl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8159"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/crcl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=8159"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}