preview

Incarcern For Debt

Decent Essays

“Americans cannot be imprisoned for debt,” is a statement that I am sure most of the public believes is true, while people who are more knowledgeable of criminal justice know it is untrue. The statement is true due to there being no explicit law stating that Americans in debt must be imprisoned. There are currently no laws in place that specifically target indebted citizens for imprisonment. Debtors’ prisons were banned in 1833, and the practice of imprisoning someone due to debt is a civil-rights violation. In 1983 this decision was upheld when incarcerating debtors was determined to be a violation of the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection clause (Hager, 2015). “Americans cannot be imprisoned for debt,” is an untrue statement in quite

Get Access