TOP
Alabama Takes From the Poor and Gives to the Rich
Photo by Nora Carol Photography via Getty Images

Alabama Takes From the Poor and Gives to the Rich

In states like Alabama, almost every interaction a person has with the criminal justice system comes with a financial cost. If you’re assigned to a pretrial program to reduce your sentence, each class attended incurs a fee. If you’re on probation, you’ll pay a fee to take your mandatory urine test. If you appear in drug court, you will face more fees, sometimes dozens of times a year. Often, you don’t even have to break the law; you’ll pay fees to pull a public record or apply for a permit. For poor people, this system is a trap, sucking them into a cycle of sometimes unpayable debt that constrains their lives and almost guarantees financial hardship.

Read the entire story in The New York Times.

 

Robin Kaiser-Schatzlein, a journalist, writes frequently about economic policy, inequality and criminal justice. For this essay, he spent four months reporting on fines and fees in Alabama.

Save An Endangered Species: Journalists

Mr. Kaiser-Schatzlein, a journalist, writes frequently about economic policy, inequality and criminal justice.

Skip to content