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New Film Decries The Return Of Debtors Prisons

Over the past decade, towns and counties across the United States have been locking up a growing number of people for failing to pay their debts. The American Civil Liberties Union and the Brennan Center for Justice documented the practice in 2010, and Human Rights Watch released the results of its own investigation earlier this year.
Critics have decried the return of the debtors prison, the reviled institution of Charles Dickens’ day. Now, a short documentary, “To Prison for Poverty,” sheds light on a particularly contentious aspect of the story.

Pay Up or Go to Jail

User fees are a fact of life in America — those inscrutable “administrative” charges tacked on to everything from checking luggage to buying theater tickets to applying for college. For people with the ability to pay, they are an irritation. But such fees are increasingly being levied on people caught up in the criminal justice system, who are overwhelmingly among the poorest members of society.