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A criminal court debt itemised bill

11/12/2012 GMT

The Cost of Doing Time

BBC World Service - The Documentary, The Cost of Doing Time

The people in Philadelphia that owe around $1.5 billion in criminal court debt.

In the United States, many ex-offenders leave prison indebted to the courts. One in five people in Philadelphia owe around $1.5 billion in criminal court debt. Why?

Rufus Taylor led a pretty sheltered life growing up in Philadelphia, but he likens his late teen years to a kind of "Rumspringa" (a time when Amish-born teenagers "run around outside the bounds"). Taylor's "Rumspringa" however, didn't take him to nightclubs, but rather resulted in multiple counts of car theft and ultimately, a charge for armed robbery. He served a total of 13 years in prison and is on probation. When he completed his sentence in 2008, he thought his time had been served, and his debt - both financial and moral - was settled. Then in 2011, he applied for welfare and was denied because he had apparently not paid off all of his debts - he owed the courts almost $42,000, an amount never mentioned when he was released. 

Taylor is one of more than 300,000 people in the city of Philadelphia who owe an estimated $1.5 billion dollars in unpaid bail, fees and fines to the courts that date back to 1971. The debt collection affects one in five people, in a city of 1.5 million.

This documentary examines the complexity of criminal court debt, which is a growing problem in cities and towns across the United States trying to pay for increasingly expensive prison systems.

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