T

his is what happens when you freelance justice.

Outrage.

Disgrace.

All in the name of the law.

Shelby County Circuit Judge Hub Harrington unleashed a double-barreled dose of disdain this week for what has gone on in Harpersville

under the alias of justice.

He described a system in which poor people are charged more because they can't initially pay petty traffic fines. Some are jailed -- for months -- because they can't pay ballooning, "unconscionable" fees. They are left without a lawyer, a day in court, or a voice.

It's like ... debtors prison.

Which, Harrington wrote in his order, "fell into disfavor by the early 1800s, though the practice appears to have remained commonplace in Harpersville."

It's barbaric. It's antiquated. It is, as Harrington put it, "disgraceful."

Right there in the richest county in Alabama.

And it happens more and more, across Alabama and the nation. The poor go to jail while the rest go home without a second thought.

It's what happens when governments turn court operations over to for-profit companies. It happens, more to the point, when governments pass the buck to get a buck.

Harpersville, like about 100 other Alabama cities, pays a private company to run its probation system.

Say, for instance, you can't pay a traffic ticket right off the bat. You will be referred to that company -- Judicial Correction Services in Harpersville's case.

It tacks on initial charges and monthly fees, on top of the original fines. The bills climb, sometimes into the thousands. Those who can't pay can be sent to jail. They can even be charged extra for every day they spend behind bars.

Now, JCS spokesman Kevin Egan argues that not is all as it appears to the judge. The company doesn't set the fees, or profit from defendants going to jail. In the cases cited by the judge, none were solely in jail because of unpaid fines to JCS, he said.

Harrington, though, based his order on depositions taken so far in a case involving several poor people incarcerated by Harpersville. He said there is "virtually undisputed evidence" that some defendants "have been subjected to repeated and ongoing violations of almost every safeguard afforded by the United States Constitution, the laws of the state of Alabama, and the Rules of Criminal Procedure."

It's a big deal.

The violations, he wrote, "are so numerous as to defy a detailed chronicling in this short space."

Life? Liberty? The pursuit of happiness?

"This court was appalled to discover that these unalienable rights have for some time been routinely denied by the City of Harpersville," he wrote.

It is a masterful, blistering order, a bat to the head of municipalities that would sell off the responsibility of justice to companies who profit from criminalizing those least able to pay.

But it was more than a rebuke. Harrington demanded that all members of the Harpersville City Council come to "any and all" future hearings of the case, that the mayor and council certify under oath that they read the order.

Because justice is not a for-profit business.

Because a city cannot shirk its duty just because it hires a company to perform it.

Because in the end, it is the city's responsibility to protect the rights of its people.

What has happened in Harpersville and elsewhere in the name of cost-savings and justice really is disgraceful.

What happened this week in Shelby County Circuit Court, though, was a wakeup call.

We have a right to justice, no matter our ability to pay. That right is not for sale.

John Archibald's column appears Sundays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Write him at

jarchibald@bhamnews.com.