impoverishing the impoverished
... Companies like JCS often sign contracts in cities and counties
strapped for cash. For the county, the deal seems like a sweet one: The
company will collect outstanding court debts for free and make all their profits from charging probationers fees. But the problem is that many
of these people were put on probation because they were too poor to pay
their fine in the first place and for them, the additional fees are
huge. People find themselves scrambling for money they don't have and
forgoing basic necessities to avoid being thrown behind bars for missing
a payment. The impact on communities, especially low-income communities of color, is devastating.
Sadly, the for-profit probation business is booming. Every year,
hundreds of thousands of people are sentenced to probation, often for
misdemeanors including unpaid parking tickets. Instead of being able to
just pay those fines and move on with their lives, many get sucked into
spiraling debt traps they cannot escape.
Mention escape, and the occasional recollection of an old Buddhist teaching of renunciation with all its bells and whistles appear in the mind - a good cracker appears leaving one wondering how much perishable food goes wasted in a city every day - if the flies with their maggots took the leftover papaya was the food wasted at all.
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