Unemployed and fighting to stay clean, Jayne Fuentes had few options when a judge offered her a particularly unappealing choice – go to jail or spend her days on a work crew.
Her crime? Being too poor to pay the fines and court costs that came with a drug conviction and several theft charges.
“But when I was done with the work crew, I still owed $2,700 on another debt,” says Fuentes, 48. “I could have ended up in jail again.”
Instead, the threat of being back behind bars or assigned to another work detail vanished last week when a lawsuit filed by Fuentes and two others ended with an agreement to abolish a local practice of locking up people who can’t pay their fines and have little hope of doing so.
Similar pay-or-stay practices are used by cities and counties across the country, tactics the American Civil Liberties Union is working to end, says spokesperson Doug Honig. He cites recent settlements or decisions in Biloxi, Miss., Colorado Springs, Colo., and the Detroit suburb of Eastpointe, Mich.
[For more of this story, written by Rick Anderson, go to http://www.latimes.com/nation/...0607-snap-story.html]
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