The evil Judicial Corrections Services extorts money

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Basically, in Alabama lots of municipalities like to sell out poor people who cannot immediately pay their fines to an evil corporation called the Judicial Corrections Services (JCS). Being referred to the JCS means you are going to pay far more than your original fines, because the JCS charges a "set-up" fee for $10 and another fee in addition to your fine of $40 a month. They target poor people for extortion this way in a manner that likely violates the RICO act. Basically, if you are unable to pay the fees in a month, they will threaten to call your family members in addition to your employer. If you remain unable to pay, they threaten you with jail.

JCS needs to be abolished.

http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/n ... ing-scheme

From page 10 of the complaint against JCS and the municipal court it is in contract, it states that this condition must be fulfilled:

http://www.splcenter.org/sites/default/ ... _v_jcs.pdf

It makes me wonder, What if you're on disability and can't work or attend school full-time, like me?

Talk about inflexible and evil.

1. This was interesting ...in the complaint is says Alabama law credits $50/day for one day in prison for those that cannot afford to pay. The wealthy get probation and the poor "work it off" in prison.

2. She owed $1632 total, and was given a $145/month repayment plan, and JCS was taking 10 + (40 * (12)) = $490 in setup fee + monthly fees from her in the 1st year of repayment.

That is $490 / $1632 = 30% in "fees" added to her amount owed in the first year alone

On the one hand, I absolutely agree that this is an injustice.

On the other though, for me personally, I decided a long time ago that if I'm ever faced with the choice of fine or jail, I will take jail every time. If the State ever decides to take it upon itself to punish me, I will punish it back to the greatest extent possible to me, which is to force them to bear the full financial burden of its decision. They can pay to shelter and feed me, and then again to rehabilitate me once I'm out.

Obviously this isn't a practical solution for most folks - but for me, every cent I cost the taxpayers is like a punch to the face of the system that utterly, irrevocably failed me. I'm content enough to leave things at the status-quo informal ceasefire, but the second the State comes knocking again I'm out for blood (metaphorically speaking of course).

Then again though, if a large enough group of people collectively refused fines in lieu of jail time, they'd run out of cells and short-circuit these JCS scumbags.

That's assuming you can afford to go to prison, given the negative impacts it has. Is such a state likely to pay to rehabilitate you?

True. As it stands now, I don't see myself costing the State more as a free man than as a jailbird. However that could change, and I'd then be faced with an opportunity cost of foregoing inflicting a greater amount of fiscal harm upon the State while maintaining my freedom, in order to inflict a lesser fiscal harm via my incarceration.

I get that you were likely referring to other costs, but given that my subjective valuation of harm done unto the State is essentially infinite, the other (finite) costs don't concern me.



Meeting with my new Rehabilitative Services caseworker next week in order to regain access to a government teat I've previously milked for well into five figures worth of education assistance (putting me through tech school, community college, and state university for free is the price I made sure that the taxpayers paid for not violently deposing the State which deprived me of an appropriate high-school education). If you're interested, I'd be happy to ask whether or not a criminal conviction bars receiving services from that agency. But I'd venture to guess that the answer to your question is "yes".

In principle, it's a more benign version of the convict lease act re-visited. It's still wrong!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convict_lease