peilthetraveler
Registered: Jun 2005
Posts: 7065 |
01-02-12 09:19 PM
http://finance.yahoo.com/blogs/dail...-172417607.html
As if life wasn't already tense enough for Americans who can't pay their debts, collection agencies are now taking advantage of archaic state laws to have some debtors arrested and sent to jail.
More than one-third of US states allow debtors to be arrested and jailed, says Jessica Silver-Greenberg in the Wall Street Journal.
Judges typically grant arrest warrants when the debtors have failed to show up for court dates or failed to make court-ordered payments.
Of course, the reason debtors have failed to make court-ordered payments is often the same reason they didn't pay their debts in the first place: They don't have any money.
In September, a 53 year-old woman named Vivian Joy was stopped for a broken tail-light in Champaign, Illinois. And then, because the cops discovered that she still hadn't paid $2,200 to a collection agency, she was cuffed and carted off to jail.
Joy's excuse?
She doesn't have any money.
Jailing debtors for not paying their debts is apparently especially popular in Illinois.
Such a lousy excuse that she doesnt have money. She obvious had money to have a car. She had money to fill up the gas tank. She had money to pay car insurance.
Maybe she should finish that sentence and she should say that she doesnt have any money because she doesnt want to downgrade her lifestyle. Sell the car and she no longer has to pay for gas, insurance, car payments and she could pay her debt in a few months, but she didn't want to do that.
Now if somebody REALLY doesnt have any money as in they cant even afford electricity in their home, gas, no car, no cable TV, no internet, then yeah, those people shouldnt have to go to jail. But if you have any "luxuries" then send them to jail if they dont pay because they are spending YOUR money on themselves!
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