Overview

Across racially segregated St. Louis County, Missouri, thousands of people have been routinely sent to jail because they cannot pay local court fines and fees. The vast majority of those fined are poor and black. In Ferguson and the surrounding municipalities, where police shooting victim Michael Brown was killed, a practice with historical antecedents has become systematic: jailing the impoverished when they are unable to pay fines and fees. In A Debtors’ Prison, Samantha Jenkins and Meredith Walker recount their unfolding court cases in St. Louis County, describing the matrix of controls that has incarcerated them repeatedly for being poor.

Through the stories in A Debtors’ Prison, students will understand how aggressive policing, court fees and monetary sentencing have created a cycle of debt and incarceration in poor communities across the United States. They will compare the circumstances in Missouri municipal courts to the policies and procedures of their local juvenile justice systems and write persuasive essays in the form of letters to their local representatives.