Our legal system is not designed to foster safety but to impose punishment.
Earlier this month, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen warned that the United States could run out of money to pay its bills as soon as June 1. Despite recent debates over whether or not to raise the debt ceiling, the truth is that both Democrats and many Republicans have largely voted to raise the debt ceiling with little to no fanfare throughout American history. Yet while lawmakers remain lenient when it comes to forgiving the government’s own debt, they offer little such empathy to folks who have incurred debt as a result of their entanglement in the carceral system.
The average incarcerated person emerges from the system having accumulated $13,607 in debt. For context, about 60 percent of people in this country cannot afford a $1,000 emergency, let alone afford to return home after years away with a gap in their resume, little chance of finding housing, and over 10 times that amount in debt. This debt — a product primarily of legal system fines and fees — can keep people legally bound to the judicial system for the remainder of their lives.
This cycle is not an accident: our legal system is not designed to foster safety but to impose punishment. Instead of ensuring folks are financially stable enough to feed their families and find legitimate work after serving their time, our system chooses instead to inflict forms of financial punishment that prolong stigma and loss of liberty.
But it does not have to be this way. In a country so willing to forgive its own federal debt, it is high time that lawmakers move past hypocrisy and toward true public safety by implementing reforms aimed at reducing carceral debt and promoting public safety.
