Colorado Springs Jails Homeless For Ineligibility To Pay Fines

Last year, the ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union) of Colorado discovered nearly 800 cases where people had gone to jail in Colorado Springs when they couldn’t pay their tickets for minor violations. Most of the people were homeless and were ticketed for things such as panhandling or sleeping in a park overnight. http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/05/05/476874262/colorado-springs-will-stop-jailing-people-too-poor-to-pay-court-fines

The city of Colorado Springs has agreed to provide restitution to dozens of poor people wrongfully jailed because they could not afford to pay their fines.

The settlement calls for the city to pay each person $125 for every day they spent locked up under a since-refined ordinance that allowed incarceration of offenders who failed to pay the fines that were wrongfully given to them.

One of the plaintiffs, Shawn Hardman, will receive a little more than $11,000. Hardman, who was formerly homeless and is now living with his sister, Annie Austin, says he will use the money to pay for a permanent place to live, and that he wants to do advocacy on behalf of homeless people.

Courts in Colorado and in other states have rules that there is nothing illegal about just holding a sign that asks for money because it is free speech protected by the first amendment. However, police in Colorado Springs issued citations and Hardman went to court multiple times. When he couldn’t pay his fines, he went to jail to pay them off. Hardman spent a total of 90 days in jail, just in one year.

An additional 65 people are eligible for hundreds or a few thousand dollars, but because the majority of them are homeless, the city is having a hard time tracking them down. The next time one of these men or women are picked up by police for being ineligible to pay their fines, they might find out that they have some money owed to them.