Will Republicans Privatize Debtors' Prisons, Too?

By karoli
CrooksandLiars

The film "Inside Job" is a wonderful walk through the Wall Street meltdown and how bankers managed to make off with billions here and abroad while ordinary folks lost their jobs, their homes and their savings. If you haven't seen it, I highly recommend it. You can watch it on Amazon on Demand or just get the DVD. Either way, it's really a must-see and a must-share film.

If you're not angry after you watch it, you should be. And if you're still not, I'm going to give you another reason to be. Debtors' prisons are making a comeback here in the United States, thanks to the Bush-era "bankruptcy reform", Republicans, and greedy corporations.

Wall Street Journal:

More than a third of all U.S. states allow borrowers who can't or won't pay to be jailed. Judges have signed off on more than 5,000 such warrants since the start of 2010 in nine counties with a total population of 13.6 million people, according to a tally by The Wall Street Journal of filings in those counties. Nationwide figures aren't known because many courts don't keep track of warrants by alleged offense. In interviews, 20 judges across the nation said the number of borrowers threatened with arrest in their courtrooms has surged since the financial crisis began.

Check out this snippet of David Walker, Pete Peterson lackey, talking about how we need to get back to meting out consequences for debt default, and specifically discussing debtors' prisons:

Can you guess the states enforcing these arrest laws? Here are just a few mentioned in 2010:

In Minnesota, which has some of the most creditor-friendly laws in the country, the use of arrest warrants against debtors has jumped 60 percent over the past four years, with 845 cases in 2009, a Star Tribune analysis of state court data has found.

(Continued here.)