Harris County, Texas and Abolishing Modern-Day Debtors' Prisons
Last month, a justice of the peace in Harris County, Texas recalled all 12,500 arrest warrants issued by his court for people charged with non-jailable class C misdemeanors— nonviolent offenses, consisting mostly of traffic violations like speeding, running a red light, or failure to yield. Despite these offenses being “fine-only,” courts can issue arrest warrants for contempt of court if a person charged with a class C misdemeanor fails to appear in court or pay their fines, even if they are unable to make payments because of poverty. Even though incarceration is a possible consequence of these types of offenses, they are considered so minor that they fall outside the constitution’s right-to-counsel guarantee: public defenders are not appointed in these cases, and individuals charged with these offenses have to navigate the costly and complex legal process on their own.
Historically, debtors’ prisons held people incarcerated for commercial debt. In 1833, Congress abolished imprisonment for debt. As states shut down debtors’ prisons throughout the nineteenth century, most established constitutional bans on imprisonment for debt. Today, forty-one states, including Texas, have state constitutional bans on debtors’ prisons. Since 1970, the Supreme Court has affirmed three times that it is unconstitutional to incarcerate people who cannot pay debt owed to the government. In Williams v. Illinois (1970), the Court held that it violates the Fourteenth Amendment’s guarantee of Equal Protection to extend a jail sentence for petty theft beyond the statutory maximum because a person is too poor to pay court fines. In Tate v. Short (1971), the Court held that when a state has a fines-only policy for punishing traffic offenses, it violates the Fourteenth Amendment’s guarantee of Equal Protection to limit punishment to a fine for people who can pay it, but to convert punishment from a fine to imprisonment for people who cannot pay the fine immediately and fully. In Bearden v. Georgia (1983), the Court held that it violates the Fourteenth Amendment’s guarantee of Equal Protection and Due Process to revoke parole for failure to pay court fines without first determining the person’s ability to pay, then establishing that their failure to pay is willful. The Bearden Court clarified that, before incarcerating someone who cannot pay a fine, the Fourteenth Amendment requires courts to consider and exhaust alternative measures of punishment, such as extending the time for making payments; reducing the fine; or requiring some form of labor or public service instead of the fine.
Despite Bearden establishing that courts must conduct ability-to-pay hearings and determine that someone’s failure to pay is willful, the Supreme Court has not clarified what “ability to pay” or “willful failure” means. In practice, many courts have discretion to assume or impute someone’s ability to pay without making any meaningful inquiry. Or, courts base their determination on arbitrary factors, like how a person dresses or whether they’re willing to cancel their phone service to pay their court debt. The result is that many jurisdictions continue to issue and execute warrants based on unpaid tickets, fines, and fees against people who, despite their best efforts, simply cannot afford to pay those debts. Thousands of individuals in Harris County and around the country are incarcerated, while their more resourced neighbors can pay their way out of the same punishments. This type of wealth-based discrimination and unequal administration of justice is precisely what Equal Justice Under Law fights against.
Fortunately for Harris County residents, Judge Steven Duble ultimately shared Equal Justice Under Law’s belief that the Constitution precludes the criminalization of poverty. After spending more than a year researching Constitutional jurisprudence pertaining to debtors’ prisons, Judge Duble recalled all 12,500 outstanding arrest warrants that had been issued based on Class C misdemeanor charges. As explained to local media after releasing a statement in September, Judge Duble’s research left him with “serious constitutional concerns as to whether we’ve done our ability-to-pay analysis.” Because Judge Duble could not guarantee that ability-to-pay and willful-failure-to-pay assessments were performed, he recalled the arrest warrants instead of continuing to rubberstamp warrants that unconstitutionally criminalize poverty.
Equal Justice Under Law was founded on the principle that being poor is not a crime and that all people, regardless of wealth status, are entitled to the constitutional promise of equal justice. Courts that ignore longstanding federal law, constitutional precedent, and their state constitutions to jail people for fines they cannot pay are condoning modern-day debtors’ prisons and contributing to the cycle of poverty. As explained in the 2023 DOJ guidance that sparked Judge Duble’s research, debt collection through incarceration disproportionately impacts low-income communities and people of color, who are already overrepresented in the criminal legal system and face obstacles, stemming from bias, discrimination, or other systemic inequalities, that stifle their economic prospects.
Equal Justice Under Law is dedicated to achieving equality in our justice system and ending the role that government plays in facilitating the cycle of poverty. Our challenges to modern-day debtors’ prisons in Montgomery, Alabama and both Ferguson and Jennings, Missouri resulted in settlements benefitting thousands of class members, including Samantha Jenkins, who was arrested and jailed nineteen times for her inability to pay one traffic ticket. Despite these steps forward, our work toward abolishing debtors’ prisons is not done. Equal Justice Under Law supports efforts by judges to avoid unlawfully imprisoning people for unpaid fines and fees. We encourage Judge Duble and others to continually examine the necessity of these fines and fees, as well as the punishments imposed on people in poverty, in pursuit of a more just system.