THE CRISIS OF MODERN AMERICA'S DEBTORS' PRISONS
Almost 200 years ago the Supreme Court outlawed the practice of sending people to jail for failing to pay court fines. Though these so-called debtor's prisons were made illegal, today many Americans are serving time in correctional facilities because they are too poor to pay for probational supervision and public defense fees, for example. Join us as we host Alec Karakatsanis, co-founder of non-profit Equal Justice Under Law, to discuss some of the American justice system's most controversial issues.
Alec graduated from Yale College in 2005 with a degree in Ethics, Politics, & Economics and Harvard Law School in 2008, where he was a Supreme Court Chair of the Harvard Law Review. Before co-founding Equal Justice Under Law, Alec was a civil rights lawyer and public defender with the Special Litigation Division of the Public Defender Service for the District of Columbia. Prior to PDS, Alec was a federal public defender in Alabama, representing impoverished people accused of federal crimes. Alec is interested in ending human caging, surveillance, the death penalty, immigration laws, war, and inequality. He is the author of The Human Lawyer, 34 N.Y.U. Rev. L. & Soc. Change 563 (2010); Protecting Corporations Instead of the Poor, 121 Harv. L. Rev. 275 (2007); and Civil Disobedience: The Role of Judges, 120 Harv. L. Rev. 1988 (2007). His most recent article is Policing, Mass Imprisonment, and the Failure of American Lawyers, 128 Harv. L. Rev. F. 253 (2015).
