Subscribe to Dollars & Sense magazine. Recent articles related to the financial crisis. Before Katrina: Modern Day Debtors' Prison In Gulfport, MSGulfport, MS was in the news over the weekend with a jaw-dropping story. Saturday's US News & World Report told of a class action suit against the city, concerning what amounted to a debtors' prison before Hurricane Katrina:Last July, a homeless man named Hubert Lindsey was stopped by police officers in Gulfport, Miss., for riding his bicycle without a light. The police soon discovered that Lindsey was a wanted man. Gulfport records showed he owed $4,780 in old fines. So, off to jail he went.As we attempt to understand the observable disparities in who gets relief and what gets rebuilt, it is important to keep in mind the city's demonstrated attitude towards its poor. It is also important to keep in mind what strips of pavement the city was beating and whom it tended to be looking for. The Amended Complaint from the lawsuit, which attorney Sarah Geraghty has sent me, describes a special force of police officers charged with patrolling the streets of Gulfport to arrest citizens who have failed to pay fines assessed by the Gulfport Municipal Court. These officers conduct periodic sweeps, during which they search the streets for people who look as though they might the City old fines. During these sweeps, the officers go into predominantly African-American neighborhoods and stop people in the streets without any independent reason or suspicion, but for the sole purpose of checking to see if they owe the City old fines. Those who owe fines are taken to jail.The state of Mississippi has the highest percentage of Black Americans in the country [PDF]. Second is Louisiana. Mississippi and Louisiana are pretty much tied for the highest poverty rates in the US, both hovering just below 20% statewide. We cannot discuss the effects of Katrina and the issues around reconstruction without serious, ongoing considerations of race and poverty. Further Reading • Sun Herald, "A lawsuit alleges that practices in Gulfport's Municipal Court are creating a DEBTORS PRISON" • Southern Center for Human Rights Indigent Defense Cases In The News Technorati Tags: activism, class, katrina, louisina, mississippi, poverty, race, racism
Comments:
Before leaving the Mississippi Delta this summer, only two weeks before Katrina, I'd heard whispers that debtors' prisons were still a fact of life in Mississippi. At the turn of the century, before Parchman Penetentiary was built, convicts were leased out and literally worked to death in the cotton fields and elsewhere. Somehow, I'd set this new information aside since it was so incredible. But now I'm a believer that the past is still the present in the Magnolia state. Great first story! Susan Klopfer
Post a Comment
<< Home |