At least the judges highlighted by the article aren't being willfully defiant of the law. For what little consolation it might be, they are simply woefully ignorant.



In defense of locking people up without assessing their ability to pay - or without offering community service - many judges demonstrate outright ignorance of the law. "There's no requirement for us to ask" defendants if they have the money to pay, said Judge Davis.

El Paso spends about $375,000 a year to jail people for unpaid fines.

It's possible that jailing people could send a message to others to pay their fines, but in interviews with judges and other officials from 18 traffic courts across Texas, that rationale never came up.

Not only is it illegal for these judges to do what they are doing, but it makes no sense either financially...... or as a deterrent.Beyond that, sending people to jail often causes them to lose their job and puts extra burdens on the person's family and/or society. When they get out they often can't get their driver's license renewed until they pay the court fees and additional charges - which the person can't do because they no longer have a job, or sometimes a driver's license to look for one.

Forty-five years after the Supreme Court declared, based, ironically, on a Texas case



the Constitution prohibits the State from imposing a fine as a sentence and then automatically converting it into a jail term solely because the defendant is indigent."

and up to six years after exposes revealing that debtors' prisons still exist around the country , the processes (and non-processes) that allow them to exist are still in place. One might think that by now there would have been court cases making their way through the judicial system that would have put a stop to most, if not all, of this insanity.

But no. You can still go to debtors' prison. In 2015.