Wince of the Week, July 1-7, 2012
The EHRP Team winced when we read this in Ethan Bronner’s July 2 article in the New York Times :
Three years ago, Gina Ray, who is now 31 and unemployed, was fined $179 for speeding. She failed to show up at court (she says the ticket bore the wrong date), so her license was revoked. When she was next pulled over, she was, of course, driving without a license. By then her fees added up to more than $1,500. Unable to pay, she was handed over to a private probation company and jailed — charged an additional fee for each day behind bars.For that driving offense, Ms. Ray has been locked up three times for a total of 40 days and owes $3,170, much of it to the probation company. — excerpted from Ethan Bronner’s July 3, 2012 New York Times article, “The Poor Land in Jail as Companies Add Huge Fees for Probation”
