Stop jailing addicts, those who can’t afford fines

The Herald Leader story about the surge in the number of women we incarcerate was not a surprise to anyone who has attended a criminal docket call. What you will see is a depressing long line of young female prisoners, that sadly parade into our local courts on a daily basis. The fact that one in four is either pregnant or has a child less than one year old is simply too depressing to think about.

At the risk of being politically incorrect and hurting the feelings of the judges and prosecutors I see every day, most of these young ladies don’t belong in jail.

When I started practicing criminal law 36 years ago, my clients were overwhelmingly men who received stolen property, got into fights or broke into homes. Today my criminal defense clients are mostly female opioid addicts who can’t shake their habit. They sell some pills, commit various forms of petty theft out of economic desperation and end up in and out of jail, and back in when they fail a drug test.

Indeed, just about every county is in desperate financial shape due to crushing costs of high incarceration rates in the local jails. The truth is that we incarcerate because addicts not surprisingly can’t control their conduct. Judges get frustrated when their conditions of release are violated. Instead of drug treatment, we punish addicts by jailing them.

The other part of the equation that is overlooked are the number of people sitting in jails because they can’t afford to pay past due fines. This shameful practice exists even though the U.S. Supreme Court banned these debtor-prison practices years ago. One local district judge declares those who can’t pay fines to be in “contempt of court” as an outrageous justification to incarcerate the truly indigent.

Any district judge candidate who courageously says that he or she is going to reduce the economic burden caused by high incarceration rates and cease incarcerating addicts and the indigent will be offering real solutions. You just don’t see many judges running for office on the promise to reduce the jail population. The truth is that anyone who works in the criminal justice system would like to see some refreshing honesty for a change.

This story was originally published November 21, 2017 at 7:53 PM with the headline "Stop jailing addicts, those who can’t afford fines."