Morning Must-Read: Alex Tabarrok: Ferguson and the Modern Debtor’s Prison

Alex Tabarrok: Ferguson and the Modern Debtor’s Prison: “How does a stop for jaywalking…

…turn into a homicide and how does that turn into an American town essentially coming under military control with snipers, tear gas, and a no-fly zone? We don’t yet know exactly what happened between the two individuals on the day in question but events like this don’t happen without a deeper context. Part of the context is the return of debtor’s prisons that I wrote about in 2012…. You don’t get $321 in fines and fees and 3 warrants per household from an about-average crime rate. You get numbers like this from bullshit arrests for jaywalking and constant ‘low level harassment involving traffic stops, court appearances, high fines, and the threat of jail for failure to pay’…