Poor House

Winford Parish never imagined his $1,800 in outstanding court debt to Washington County would land him in prison for two years.

In 2007, a judge convicted the 39-year-old man of manufacturing marijuana. Judge Gayle Nachtigal gave him a second chance and suspended his 28-month sentence to five years' probation.

But on Oct. 25 of this year, sheriff's deputies hauled him into Judge Kirsten Thompson's court for consistent failure to pay court-ordered financial obligations as part of his probation.

When the unemployed father told Thompson he could not pay fines for things such as court-appointed attorney fees, prosecutor Jason Weiner told Parish he could have recycled soda cans for money. Parish is now in Coffee Creek Correctional Facility in Wilsonville.

Some say Parish is an extreme example of a judicial practice in Oregon's second-largest county of leveling court fines and fees against homeless, unemployed and poor people—then incarcerating them when they don't pay.

"Court fees are crushing people who are already struggling in this economy," says Dean Smith, Washington County office chief of the nonprofit Metropolitan Public Defenders. "People get on probation that have no hope of meeting the conditions."

If that all seems straight out of a 19th-century debtor's prison, there's an Oct. 3 report by the American Civil Liberties Union that says such practices are increasingly common nationwide and that they violate the U.S. Constitution.

"Day after day, indigent defendants are imprisoned for failing to pay legal debts they can never hope to manage," according to the report "In for a Penny: The Rise of America's New Debtor's Prisons."

The report goes on to say jailing or imprisoning debtors is often "illegal…and a fruitless effort to extract payments from defendants who may be homeless, unemployed or simply too poor to pay."

Statistics are unavailable on how many indigent Oregonians go to prison or jail for debt because record-keeping and judicial practices vary among the state's 36 counties. But attorneys and defendants in Washington County describe a vicious cycle in which indigents who commit minor offenses, such as riding TriMet without a ticket, can pay up to $692 in fines and fees. Failure to pay on time means a court summons and more fees, and can even land someone in jail for up to 14 days.

Such practices are practically unheard of elsewhere in the region, defense lawyers say. Rob Raschio is board president of the Oregon Criminal Defense Lawyers Association and practices criminal defense in places like Hood River County. He says most of the time judges there simply waived court fees for indigents.

"We're putting people in a situation where they have to ask [themselves], 'Should I feed my family or pay my court fines?'" Raschio says.

That's the view of many Multnomah County defenders who don't see their clients hauled in for debt because they say in most instances it's hard to prove someone is willfully not paying a bill.

"I've never heard of a probation violation based on court fines in Multnomah County," says Kasia Rutledge, a public defender who's worked in both Washington and Multnomah counties. "The judges here seem to know you can't prove willful nonpayment."

Multnomah County Judge Leslie Roberts won't go as far as to say Washington County is playing by different rules. But the judge admits feeling frustrated when her own probationers won't pay their fines because they decide to pay fines in "another county" first for fear of jail.

"That's not helpful," says Roberts. "The difference really shouldn't be where the county lines are."

Nachtigal, who oversees Washington County's criminal justice judges, doesn't think the county violates the state Constitution's ban on imprisoning debtors.

"Their sentence is for not complying with the terms of their probation," Nachtigal says. "I'm always concerned about the case and making sure we're doing it right.... Do I sit there and say, 'Is this debtor's prison?' I'm not sure that's at the top of my list of concerns.'"

"Part of it is a re-engineering of their thinking process," she adds. "Part of is to say 'This is life. We all have bills."

County Trial Court Administrator Richard Moellmer, who notifies judges when probationers owe payments, says, "The court is sensitive to the position that we don't fill up the jails with people who just owe money."

But Moellmer admits the county issues debt warrants, in some cases blocking people from completing probation because they still owe money.

In the past year, the county issued 282 bench warrants to debtors whose probation was about to expire. The vast majority were between $200 and $500 behind in their payments. But defense lawyers say that number doesn't give the full picture

Bobbie Joe Johnson is a 24-year-old single mother of two who spent the night in jail Oct. 20 because she was $75 behind in payments stemming from a 2008 shoplifting conviction in Washington County.

"I would have been in jail for nine nights if my boss hadn't come and bailed me out," says Johnson, a secretary at Portland Window and Gutter Cleaning. "They don't care what your problems or struggles are," she says. "This here is just money, money, money."

WWeek 2015