© 2024 Kansas City Public Radio
NPR in Kansas City
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations

NPR Investigation: Debtors Prisons Can Still Be Found

Thirty years ago, the U.S. Supreme Court made it clear: judges can’t send someone to jail because they’re too poor to pay their court fines. That would be debtors prison, and those were outlawed in the United States back before the Civil War.

But an NPR state-by-state survey found that people are still being sent to jail for unpaid fines and fees. This is an encore presentation of a report filed by NPR’s  Joseph Shapiro earlier this year.

Guest

Copyright 2020 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

KCUR prides ourselves on bringing local journalism to the public without a paywall — ever.

Our reporting will always be free for you to read. But it's not free to produce.

As a nonprofit, we rely on your donations to keep operating and trying new things. If you value our work, consider becoming a member.