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Date: April 29, 2024 Mon
Time: 10:39 pm
Time: 10:39 pm
Results for poverty (ohio, u.s.)
1 results foundAuthor: American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio Title: The Outskirts of Hope: How Ohio’s Debtors’ Prisons Are Ruining Lives and Costing Communities Summary: During his January 8, 1964 State of the Union address, President Lyndon B. Johnson announced the launch of a “War on Poverty.” This announcement led to new programs that provided greater access to education, job training, and social assistance for financially disadvantaged people. New awareness campaigns were also launched to raise the profile of both urban and rural Americans caught in the vicious cycle of poverty, struggling to make ends meet with nearly no hope for escape. Nearly 50 years after President Johnson’s speech, poverty in America has not dissipated. In Ohio, the percentage of people living in poverty has actually grown. In 1969, 10% of the state’s population lived in poverty. By 2012, that number had risen to 16.4%.2 As in 1964, generational poverty is all too common in both rural and urban areas, but there is also a new class of suburban poor. Fueled by severe economic hemorrhaging, the number of people living in poverty in Ohio grew by 57.7% from 1999 to 2011, with the largest increase coming from suburban counties. This same phenomenon occurred throughout the Midwest, with concentrated poverty nearly doubling in Midwestern metropolitan areas between 2000 and 2009. The plight of the poor becomes both more difficult and more obvious when they have contact with the criminal justice system, where people with fewer resources often receive correspondingly worse treatment. Those in poverty cannot afford private counsel to negotiate favorable sentences. Instead, they face criminal charges with representation from overworked and underresourced public defenders. When facing only misdemeanor charges, they may have no attorneys at all. Regardless of whether or not charges could result in jail time, defendants often come away with a mountain of harsh fines and fees. For people who live paycheck to paycheck, it may be nearly impossible to pay them. The resurgence of contemporary debtors’ prisons sits squarely at this intersection of poverty and criminal justice. While this term conjures up images of Victorian England, the research and personal stories in this report illustrate that debtors’ prisons remain all too common in 21st century Ohio. In towns across the state, thousands of people face the looming specter of incarceration every day, simply because they are poor. Taking care of a fine is straightforward for some Ohioans — having been convicted of a criminal or traffic offense and sentenced to pay a fine, an affluent defendant may simply pay it and go on with his or her life. For Ohio’s poor and working poor, by contrast, an unaffordable fine is just the beginning of a protracted process that may involve contempt charges, mounting fees, arrest warrants, and even jail time. The stark reality is that, in 2013, Ohioans are being repeatedly jailed simply for being too poor to pay fines. Details: Cleveland: ACLU of Ohio, 2013. 24p Source: Internet Resource: Accessed April 17, 2013 at: http://www.acluohio.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/TheOutskirtsOfHope2013_04.pdf Year: 2013 Country: United States URL: http://www.acluohio.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/TheOutskirtsOfHope2013_04.pdf Shelf Number: 128391 Keywords: FinesPoverty (Ohio, U.S.)Socioeconomic Conditions |