From Market Value:
On a recent blustery September morning, Melissa Taylor stood in front of a gathered crowd in New York City. “New York State has been waging an economic war against poor people for decades,” she said.
Taylor, now 45, said she had been arrested at age 19 for failing to pay an old $90 probation fee that she had not known existed, and spent the night in jail. Other small brushes with the criminal justice system also dogged her: as a teenager, she began driving with a learner’s permit without an adult in the car. Fines and fees for those offenses eventually reached $5,000, keeping her from driving and pursuing her dream of going to college.
What Taylor calls “economic war against poor people” is well-documented. A Justice Department investigation into the 2014 death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, called Brown’s death “driven by overriding pressure from the city to use law enforcement not as a public service, but as a tool for raising revenue.” Continue reading >>>
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