[Responsibility2nd]

This article is speaking out of both sides of its mouth.

  Misleading headline:  Jailed for $ 280. The Return of Debtors' Prisons

~snip~ How did breast cancer survivor Lisa Lindsay end up behind bars? She didn't pay a medical bill -- one the Herrin, Ill., teaching assistant was told she didn't owe. "She got a $280 medical bill in error and was told she didn't have to pay it," The Associated Press reports. "But the bill was turned over to a collection agency, and eventually state troopers showed up at her home and took her to jail in handcuffs."

 

Leads one to think Lindsay was jailed for not paying her bill. But that is not the case....

 

Under the law, debtors aren't arrested for nonpayment, but rather for failing to respond to court hearings, pay legal fines, or otherwise showing "contempt of court" in connection with a creditor lawsuit. * * *

[DannyTN]

"This article is speaking out of both sides of its mouth."

Not really. The charges may not say "Failure to pay debt" but they are a direct result of failing to pay the debt or of being poor.

If you can't pay the debt, so you get fined with legal fees because you can't pay the debt. Now you don't pay the legal fees which are probably astronomical relative to the debt you owed in the first place, so you get charged with contempt of court and thrown in jail. It's all a direct result of failure to pay.

[Lazamataz]

This is an abusive mess of the courts. We have a civil court system in which the worst that can AND SHOULD be able to happen to you is forfeiture of items, liens on accounts, and garnishments of wages. CRIMINAL PENALTIES SUCH AS JAIL SHOULD NEVER APPLY, even if you don’t show up for court. In that event, if you don’t show up, there could be an immediate and default judgement, BUT NEVER A JAILING.

This will be used against ordinary Americans to round-up and destroy us, folks. Comon, figure this stuff out.