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Podcast: TWO REPORTERS
Episode: Are you kidding? We have debtors' prisons in America?? / From the archive
Description: The US government outlawed debtors' prisons in the 1830s, the Supreme Court ruled they're unconstitutional more than 40 years ago, and you'll find sentences like this on the internet: "Today it is illegal to put someone in prison because of a debt." So how is it that courts across the country lock up thousands of low-income people each year, according to estimates, because they haven't paid up their traffic tickets, garbage collection bills and other minor violations? Lisa Foster, a former judge and co-founder of the Fines and Fees Justice Center, says many courts have become "a place of...