Both suits allege that Red Hills, acting on behalf of the government, wrongfully detained and jailed people who were too poor to afford court and probation fees.
Now, across much of America, what starts as a simple speeding ticket can, if you're too poor to pay, mushroom into an insurmountable debt, padded by probation fees and, if you don't appear in court, by warrant fees.
Twenty years ago, in weighing the pros and cons of probation fees, the National Institute of Corrections, an agency within the United States Department of Justice, said that fees like these "represent double taxation: the assessment of a user fee is, in reality, payment for services already supported by general taxes paid by probationers".
Ray and Lipsey signed statements asserting that Howell had shot Pernell in a robbery attempt to get money to pay probation fees due the following day.
Instead of finishing his junior year, he spent three months in jail, and then a year under house arrest, allowed to leave only to work temp jobs intended to pay an array of court and probation fees.
In a report issued last week, the Georgia Department of Audits recently found a high frequency of case management problems, including failure to impose general supervision standards, failure to respond to probationers who missed reporting dates, and cases in which people were required to continue paying probation fees after their probation terms expired.
But by that summer her total court costs and fines had soared from hundreds of dollars incurred by the initial tickets to $4,713, including more than a thousand dollars in private-probation fees.
Last month, the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Alabama held a hearing to address the claims of three plaintiffs with cases similar to Harriet Cleveland's: all had been unable to pay court costs and private-probation fees associated with traffic tickets, and all three had been jailed by the city of Montgomery as a result.
In Alameda County, California, which includes Oakland, for instance, the board of supervisors recently unanimously voted to put a moratorium on all fees for probation and incarceration of juvenile offenders.
Many can't afford to pay extra fines or fees, so probation is their only option.But stories such as Thomas Barrett's, who ended up in jail for failing to pay fees that reached $1,000 for stealing a can of beer valued at $2, have brought this nasty business to light.
