But for people like Thompson, this industry helps contribute to a cycle of jail, unemployment, and poverty. In late January, the ACLU filed a lawsuit against JCS and DeKalb County, alleging that pay-only probation unfairly targeted people who were too poor to pay at sentencing—and were, therefore, likely to be unable to pay later. “Across the county, the freedom of too many people is resting on their ability to pay,” said Nusrat Choudhury, an ACLU attorney who represents Thompson. “We seek to dismantle that two-tiered system of justice, which disproportionately punishes people of color.”

This isn’t the first legal challenge JCS has faced. Last year, the Southern Poverty Law Center, representing victims of pay-only probation, reached an agreement with the city of Montgomery, Alabama regarding overzealous practices that jailed people unable to pay mounting fines. The city also did not renew its contract with JCS. The ACLU said that 13 states currently use for-profit companies to manage their probation services. The arrangement is most common in the Deep South: Choudhury pointed out that Georgia employs private companies to monitor 80 percent of its probation services for misdemeanors, more than any other state.

Debt has historically been associated with a lack of moral character, and the Dickensian idea of a “debtor’s prison” has long been a fixture of Western culture. In fact, until the 19th century, prisons almost exclusively housed debtors, not murderers. The tradition began in ancient Rome, where only debtors were held behind bars; those who committed other crimes were brutally killed or banished. For centuries, England followed the same logic: Locking someone up would force them to pony up the cash, or at least find someone who could loan it to them. It was considered a more humane treatment that the previous methods of indentured servitude or slavery. Over time, helping poor debtors out of jail became a cause célèbre, advocated by people like Benjamin Franklin. Ironically, colonial Georgia was originally created as a place for debtors to escape the cycle of incarceration and debt.

Debtor’s prisons have been formally outlawed since the Supreme Court’s 1983 ruling in Bearden v. Georgia. Bearden was convicted of robbery and ordered to pay a $500 fine and $250 in restitution. He made the first few payments but was then laid off from his job and left unable to pay the balance. In response, Georgia sent him to prison. The Supreme Court unanimously held that this violated his Fourteenth Amendment rights to “fundamental fairness.” In other words, someone could not be imprisoned simply for failure to pay through no fault of his or her own. While this seems straightforward enough, people are incarcerated across the country without any judicial inquiry as to their ability to pay.