Are There No Prisons?

(11 am. – promoted by ek hornbeck)

In 1833 after decades of controversy, since borrowers owing as little as 60 cents could be held indefinitely in squalid jails until they paid off their debt … let me introduce our contemporary version Debtors Prison Redux.

‘Are there no prisons?”

‘And the Union workhouses. Are  they still in operation?’

“The Treadmill and the Poor Law are in full vigour, then?”

Starting at 2:10 Christmas Carol

In an era where the lines have been all but erased between Wall Street and Washington DC it seems the Corporatocracy has no interest in taking a haircut of any size in this debt fueled implosion. Yet annual bonuses equal to 3 or 4 years of wages for most are continually handed out … and the losses ….. are non-existent. Backed by tax payer dollars the theft continues while no investigation or prosecutions are even on the horizon.

Unless… you are one of the peasant debtors …

From the WSJ article “Welcome to Debtors’ Prison, 2011 Edition”

More than a third of all U.S. states allow borrowers who can’t or won’t pay to be jailed. Judges have signed off on more than 5,000 such warrants since the start of 2010 in nine counties with a total population of 13.6 million people, according to a tally by The Wall Street Journal of filings in those counties. Nationwide figures aren’t known because many courts don’t keep track of warrants by alleged offense. In interviews, 20 judges across the nation said the number of borrowers threatened with arrest in their courtrooms has surged since the financial crisis began.

At a time when popular outcry is for reduction in government spending we have the Debt Issuers Oligarchy expanding the use of public services to enforce their private collections. The laws allowing for the arrest of someone for an unpaid debt are not new. What is new is the rise of well-funded, aggressive and centralized collection firms, in many cases run by attorneys, that buy up unpaid debt and use the courts to collect. The debt buyers also file tens of thousands of other collection actions in the state, seeking court orders to make people pay.

Some judges elsewhere are issuing fewer debt-related arrest warrants because law-enforcement officials complained those cases gobble up resources needed to pursue violent offenders.

Earlier this year, Vanderburgh County, Ind., Superior Court Judge Robert Pigman asked Indiana’s highest court to review the legality of debt-related warrants after law-enforcement officials complained they can’t quickly access arrest orders for dangerous criminals because their computer system is clogged with debt cases.

How far out of hand has this gotten?

A trade group representing debt collectors supports the bill and says the changes are needed because some companies are abusing Washington’s existing law by improperly arresting borrowers. At the national level, the Federal Trade Commission began scrutinizing in July 2010 the use of arrest warrants in debt-collection lawsuits. The FTC has yet to comment.

How many of these debt criminals have received the full extent of the law?

Last year, officials in McIntosh County, Okla., south of Tulsa, issued about 1,500 debt-related arrest warrants, up from about 800 a year before the crisis, according to a court clerk. More than 950 borrowers got similar warrants in Salt Lake City courts last year. Maricopa County, Ariz., officials issued 260 debt-related warrants in 2010.

What kind of massive debt earns a deadbeat a trip to the big house?

Easy Money Express Inc. of Paducah, Ky., payday lender won arrest warrants against at least four customers. One spent five days in a Carbondale, Ill., jail last March after failing to pay a $275 debt, court filings show.

In September 2009, Jeffrey Stearns, a concrete-company owner, answered a knock at the door from a Hancock County, Ind., deputy sheriff. The deputy was holding a warrant to arrest Mr. Stearns for not paying $4,024.88 owed to a unit of American International Group Inc. on a loan for his pickup truck.

Where was the movement to round up WS criminals when the economy was imploding due to their issuance and packaging of toxic waste? They were busy changing laws for their own protection. Recall the bankruptcy law in 2005, fully funded by the credit card companies saught to push more people into the debt repayment Chapter 13 vs the wipe clean Chapter 7.

Lawmakers who favor the new law argue that it will prevent consumers from abusing the bankruptcy laws – using them to clear debts that they can afford to pay.

But consumer advocates argue that the new law is a gift to creditors – particularly the credit card industry, which may receive $1 billion or more from repayment plans due to the expected increase in Chapter 13 filings …

When it came time to pay the piper the largest debtors in the country, AIG, GS, JPM, MS … you know the names… declared prison was only “for the poor unwashed masses.”