NEW ORLEANS (CN) - A federal class action claims poor city residents are routinely arrested and held in jail, sometimes for months, until they pay exorbitant court fees that ultimately fund what amounts to a private kitty for judicial officials.
"Despite longstanding Supreme Court precedent that the government cannot imprison people just because they are poor, New Orleans officials routinely use jail and threats of jail to collect court debts from thousands of the City's poorest people," the class of at least five plaintiffs says.
"The result is an illegal, unconstitutional and unjust modern debtors' prison," says the complaint, which was filed September 17.
The class says court fees are imposed without the court first asking whether the person can pay, and that all officials involved in the criminal justice system benefit from the fees.
"To make matters worse, officials in the Collections Department of the Orleans Parish Criminal District Court have admitted under oath that they have been issuing arrest warrants for unpaid debts by signing themselves the signatures of judges without first presenting any information to the judge or even notifying the judge," the lawsuit says.
"The environment of threats of jail and actual jailing creates a culture of fear among indigent people and their families, who borrow money at high interest rates, divert money from food for their children, and cash their family members' disability checks in a desperate attempt to pay the Collections Department to avoid infinite confinement," according to the class action.
"When an indigent defendant appears in court, every government entity - the jailer who brought her there, the lawyer assigned to represent her, the prosecutor arguing against her, and the judge ruling in her case - funds its own budget in part based on the decisions made in her case. Each of them takes a percentage of every money bond that is required for release after arrest. Each also partially funds their own budgets through fees that are assessed only upon conviction," the plaintiffs claim.
Poverty is widespread in New Orleans, with an estimated 104,900 people, or more than a quarter of the population, living below the poverty line. One in two adult black men in New Orleans, for instance, are unemployed and receive no unemployment compensation.
The lawsuit says the defendants know that most people appearing before them are impoverished because 85 percent of the people appearing in Orleans Parish Criminal Court have been determined to be indigent for purposes of appointment of the Orleans Public Defenders.
High court debts increase jail return rates, blocks people being released from jail from being able to start fresh and "devastates families who have to make hard choices about debt payments or food, inhibits mental health care, and makes it harder for people to obtain housing and employment," the class action says.
The lawsuit then goes on to describe the plaintiffs' allegations in detail.
According to Alana Cain, 26, a warrant was issued for her arrest after she called the collections department after many months of payments to explain she could not make the next $100 monthly fee payment she was assessed following a felony burglary charge.
Cain says was told not to bother to pay anything less than $50.