A wall of Marshalsea Prison, where the father of Charles Dickens was imprisoned for being in debt. (Photo: Hornbeam Arts )You don’t need to read Charles Dickens to learn about debtors’ prisons. You can just visit Sherwood, Arkansas.
The settlement has been preliminarily approved by the U.S. District Court in Montgomery. The court will hold a final hearing in August to decide whether to formally approve the agreement. In a town where almost 30 percent of the population lives below the poverty line, at least 190 impoverished people were jailed for nonpayment within a two-year period.
An Alabama city reached a legal settlement with the Southern Poverty Law Center Tuesday to end a class action lawsuit that accused it, and its chief of police, of illegally jailing people too poor to pay fines resulting from traffic and misdemeanor offences. The City of Alexander and Chief of Police Willie Robinson were accused of jailing at least 190 impoverished people over a two-year period, …
A new lawsuit seeks to stop the city of Des Moines from garnishing the state income tax refunds to pay traffic camera violation fines. The city has seized refunds for such fines for three years. Attorney Jim Larew, of Iowa City, said in the lawsuit filed last week that officials are misusing the program.
The Justice Department filed a brief Monday supporting a class-action lawsuit that claims Virginia suspends poor people’s driver’s licenses in an “unconstitutional scheme,” court documents show. In July, the class-action lawsuit, Stinnie et al. v. Holcomb , was filed in U.S. District Court in Western Virginia against the Virginia Department of Motor Vehicles, claiming 940,000 people …
The Woodhaven Care Center in Monroeville promises families that a large, accommodating staff will see to the grooming and medical needs of their loved ones. But when retired steelworker Reggie Hickman’s wife, Catherine, became a resident there after suffering a stroke, he says she just languished in bed. “She never got the proper care that she she should have had, being …
Chicago’s red-light camera program is an example of how government can fail miserably. Chicago city officials installed their red-light camera program to pick the pockets of local motorists, not enhance traffic safety. So it seems apropos that a Cook County judge this week gave her approval to a class-action lawsuit covering up to 1.5 million motorists that attacks the manner in which this …
Police, jailers and court officials in the city of Florissant routinely hold people in jail for an inability to pay fines, often arbitrarily and indefinitely in a jail with deplorable conditions, according to a class-action lawsuit filed Monday. The lawsuit was filed by the nonprofit law group ArchCity Defenders on behalf of five St. Louis-area residents. ArchCity Defenders has filed lawsuits …
A lawsuit against three local cities over fines issued by automated traffic cameras has been dismissed, but the legal fight is not over yet. Multiple people who were fined for traffic violations documented by red light and speed detection cameras in Dayton, Trotwood and West Carrollton sued the jurisdictions, claiming the civil penalties and administrative procedures used to dispute them …
Robert Taylor insists he’s a good guy, but says the state of Virginia has treated him like a bad one ever since he got buried under a pile of unpaid traffic tickets, fees and fines. The 28-year-old Richmond man spends weekends in jail, can’t hold a job and does not know how he will ever pay off the nearly $5,000 he owes the state. “I’m not a criminal in any sense of the word,” Robert Taylor …