CBS Details Route To ‘Debtor Prison’ In U.S.

March 28, 2016 By

Starting with the story of a Georgia teenager who spent five days in jail for an illegal left-hand turn, the CBS News “Market Watch” program is outlining how the civil-case to jail-case route actually happens. It turns out that the 19-year-old driver could not pay $838 quickly enough. Eventually, a lawsuit over the case was reportedly settled for $70,000, but CBS says the practice remains common nationally.

Of course, the poster child for the practice, and what it can trigger, is Ferguson, MO, where the city’s finance director famously offered advice to the police chief in a March 2010 letter, warning that “unless ticket writing ramps up significantly before the end of the year,” the city faced a budget shortfall, said Norquist. He added that a state lawmaker had told him police officers would get little notices along with their paychecks, warning: “If we don’t get more tickets, there won’t be pay increases.”

Read about the new American debtor’s prison here: How you could go to debtors’ prison in the U.S.

Filed Under: Community, National Tagged With: , , ,

Why Ferguson Opposed The ‘Ferguson Reforms’

August 11, 2015 By
With civil unrest in Ferguson, MO, once again making headlines, it’s probably worth noting that much of all this had to do with municipal court reform. In particular, it had to do with traffic tickets given to poor African-Americans and pretty much funding the city with that system. The Justice Department report called for sweeping changes, the state called for sweeping changes and newspapers reported on the famous “Ferguson Reforms.”
 
But once the national spotlight moved on, Ferguson and towns like it did not embrace the reforms, which by and large did not actually become law. One reason is that new laws would have placed limits on how much of a local city’s budget came from traffic enforcement, which some leaders think could lead to some towns going away. Conservatives, it turns out, have been on a “consolidation” kick of late… you can see POLITICO break down the issues here:
 
Filed Under: Community, Courts Budget Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

TV News Report Includes Director’s Rare Comments Demanding Change

May 27, 2015 By
 
A California NBC TV affiliate has scored a rare interview with the director of the nation’s immigration system, and he’s not holding back in blaming lawmakers for what amounts to a broken system. Bay Area NBC says that “… in his first ever TV interview on camera, the Director of the Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR) tells NBC Bay Area that only a complete overhaul by Congress will truly fix the issues plaguing the current system.”
 
“There’s no question that the system, the immigration court system, is under incredible stress right now,” Director Juan Osuna told the NBC Bay Area Investigative Unit, which conducted the interview in Washington, D.C. The multi-part report says that “… according to EOIR’s latest figures, US Immigration Courts received 306,045 cases in 2014 alone. Many of those cases were never heard, adding to a backlog which now totals 445,607 according to Syracuse University’s Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, or TRAC.”
 
The comments are rare, both because of what NBC called “tradition” and also because the immigration system, including the judicial branch, are not “courts” at all but really are a function of the Department of Justice. 
 
See the milestone story here.
Filed Under: Border Kids, Community Tagged With: , , , , ,

WSJ Story Notes Civil Gideon Trend

April 9, 2015 By
The Wall Street Journal is taking notice of momentum for a “civil Gideon” approach to lawsuits involving life-changing decisions, like foreclosure or family custody. The WSJ reports that the newly approved state budget “… allocated $85 million for indigent civil legal services at the request of the state judiciary, an increase of $15 million from the previous fiscal year.”
 
And in New York City, Mayor Bill de Blasio recommended in his preliminary budget proposal spending $36 million on free legal services in housing court, which would bring the city’s total spending on civil legal services up to about $50 million.
 
By way of background, the deep-dive WSJ story noted that the trend has a history of success and “… in 2009, California passed the Sargent Shriver Civil Counsel Act, which created several pilot programs, supported by court fees, free legal counsel in civil cases. In its third year, the program has succeeded despite a modest $8 million annual budget, its coordinators say. More than 15,000 people have been served so far, most in eviction cases.
 
“One of the big takeaways is that attorneys help settle cases,” said Bonnie Hough, managing attorney for California’s Judicial Council. Read the story here: New York Officials Push Right to Counsel in Civil Cases
Filed Under: Cases, Courts Budget, National Tagged With: , , , , ,

Central American Cases Push Others Aside

January 27, 2015 By
One way to respond to the immigration courts crisis highlighted by those unaccompanied minors from Central America would be to overhaul the system and increase capacity. Another would be to push those cases ahead of others in hopes of discouraging other migrants from coming. Guess which one we’re doing? 
 
The Houston Chronicle has a strong story about “… a startling turnaround for a clogged immigration court system that usually takes about six months between just these first steps [as opposed to 30 days], reflecting the government’s effort to push Central American cases through the pipeline to deter other migrants from coming. The aggressive effort, however, has ramifications for others in the system, which is facing a record backlog of more than 430,000 cases nationwide. Some immigrants’ hearings have been delayed indefinitely, which can impede time-sensitive cases and jeopardize their chances of gaining legal residency. Mexicans, who make up the largest portion of immigration courts’ caseload, saw their disposition times increase by about 13 percent to 533 days, according to a new analysis of court records by Syracuse University’s Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse.”
 
“The Central American cases have completely taken over the docket,” immigration attorney Salvador Colon told the paper, while another noted that “they’re shoving all the Central Americans in front saying, ‘Go home and tell everyone else not to come because you’re going to be deported. The immigration court here looks like a day care because there are so many little kids hopping around.”
 
Filed Under: Border Kids, Cases, Community Tagged With: , , , , ,

Senator Seeks Cameras In Fed. Courts

January 6, 2015 By
U.S. Sen. Charles Grassley, poised to become Senate Judiciary Committee chairman, is already making increased court transparency a priority. The Des Moines Register reports that the senator “… is again encouraging the U.S. Supreme Court to add cameras in the courtroom.” His encouragement comes in the wake of U.S. Chief Justice John Roberts dedicating his year-end “state of the courts” report on technology, but without even mentioning cameras in the courtroom.
 
“In his year-end report, Chief Justice Roberts rightly promotes how the courts have embraced new technology,” Grassley is quoted as saying in the report from the Associated Press. “Unfortunately, though, the courts have yet to embrace the one technology that the founders would likely have advocated for — cameras in the courtroom. The founders intended for trials to be held in front of all people who wished to attend.”
 
The senator has introduced legislation to force the courts to allow cameras and says he will do so again. See the story here: Grassley: Put cameras in the Supreme Court

 

Filed Under: Cases, Community Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

Obama Said To Be Planning Big Immigration Move

November 13, 2014 By
While early reports do not focus on the more than 300,000 recent Central American “border kids” awaiting deportation hearings, it does seem President Obama is making good on his immigration policy promises. The New York Times reports that “… part of Mr. Obama’s plan alone could affect as many as 3.3 million people who have been living in the United States illegally for at least five years, according to an analysis by the Migration Policy Institute, an immigration research organization in Washington. But the White House is also considering a stricter policy that would limit the benefits to people who have lived in the country for at least 10 years, or about 2.5 million people.”
 
The NYT added that “… extending protections to more undocumented immigrants who came to the United States as children, and to their parents, could affect an additional one million or more if they are included in the final plan that the president announces.” Immigration cases, thought by many to be criminal cases, are actually civil actions. For example, immigration “judges” are actually employees of the Justice Department.
 
But officials also said, according to the Times, that patrol agents and judges at the Department of Homeland Security, the Justice Department and other federal law enforcement and judicial agencies, “will make clear that deportations should still proceed for convicted criminals, foreigners who pose national security risks and recent border crossers.”
 
Filed Under: Border Kids, Community, Courts Budget, National Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Rolling Stone Blows Lid Off Financial Scandal

November 11, 2014 By
It did not take long for Matt Taibbi to return Rolling Stone to the top of your must-read list. His story on the financial coverup behind those huge civil lawsuit settlements is making the rounds. He reports, among many things, that “… six years after the crisis that cratered the global economy, it’s not exactly news that the country’s biggest banks stole on a grand scale. That’s why the more important part of Fleischmann’s story is in the pains Chase and the Justice Department took to silence her… she was blocked at every turn: by asleep-on-the-job regulators like the Securities and Exchange Commission, by a court system that allowed Chase to use its billions to bury her evidence, and, finally, by officials like outgoing Attorney General Eric Holder, the chief architect of the crazily elaborate government policy of surrender, secrecy and cover-up…”
 
The report focuses on a whistle-blower attorney, he calls her the $9 billion witness, with insider knowledge. It notes that the woman this year “… watched as Holder’s Justice Department struck a series of historic settlement deals with Chase, Citigroup and Bank of America. The root bargain in these deals was cash for secrecy. The banks paid big fines, without trials or even judges – only secret negotiations that typically ended with the public shown nothing but vague, quasi-official papers called ‘statements of facts,’ which were conveniently devoid of anything like actual facts.”
 
Filed Under: Community, Courts Budget, National Tagged With: , , , , , , , , ,

Feds Demanding Interpreters In Civil Cases

November 5, 2014 By
In a situation sure to echo nationally, California is scrambling to “voluntarily” remedy a civil rights violation for not providing interpreters in certain civil cases, The Los Angeles Times reports. The Times notes that “… unlike those charged with a crime, people in civil court do not have the constitutional right to an interpreter. For many of California’s nearly 7 million limited-English proficient speakers — about one-third of whom live in Los Angeles County — that makes the system practically impenetrable… the problem led the U.S. Department of Justice last year to conclude that L.A. County and the state’s Judicial Council were violating the Civil Rights Act.
 
The Times explained that the investigation “was prompted by a complaint filed by the Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles on behalf of two low-income clients. One had been sexually assaulted and sought a restraining order against her attacker; the other had filed for custody and child support for her son. Both were denied Korean interpreters. Federal authorities have given California the chance to voluntarily improve services. But failure to make the court system accessible to all could result in federal intervention.”
 
The Times story comes in a context of diminished civil court services and delays in family court, among other challenges. Top court officials have said mere access to courts become a civil rights issue.
 
Filed Under: Border Kids, Community, Courts Budget, National Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

ICE Holds Down Under ‘Trust Act’ Policy

October 23, 2014 By
Some new numbers are confirming that law enforcement officials are holding fewer immigrants on behalf of federal immigration authorities. The change comes under policies of the Trust Act that went into place earlier this year and follow court decisions on the “holds.” The Associated Press reports that “… immigration officials say local authorities across the U.S. released thousands of immigrants from jails this year despite efforts to take them into federal custody, including more than 3,000 with previous felony charges or convictions.”
 
The AP story explains that “… the Trust Act limits the ability of local law enforcement to comply with Immigration and Customs Enforcement requests to hold immigrants longer than their scheduled release date to give ICE time to take them into custody.” Immigration issues are nearly always “civil,” not criminal issues.
 
California’s San Diego County was among the five counties nationwide with the most federal immigration requests declined, according to newly released ICE data. Santa Clara, Los Angeles, Alameda and Miami-Dade, FL, were the other four. In northern California, the number of detainees transferred to ICE custody fell 53 percent during fiscal year 2014, according to ICE. In the Los Angeles area, the number fell by 15 percent. Similar figures weren’t available for San Diego, but in fiscal year 2013, immigration authorities requested that 3,020 detainees be transferred to ICE custody from San Diego and Imperial counties, reports the AP.
 
See the story via California public radio here: Immigration Holds Plummet In First Year Of California’s Trust Act
Filed Under: Border Kids, Community, Courts Budget, National Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
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