Debtors’ Prison Project
The Public Justice Debtors’ Prison Project is dedicated to fighting the criminalization of poverty nationwide at every stage of the criminal legal process: from arrest through the imposition and collection of fines and fees. Working with allies and impacted communities, we use strategic litigation, advocacy, and education to ensure no one is jailed simply because they can’t pay and to stop governments and for-profit corporations from treating people impacted by the system as a revenue source to exploit.
Our approach recognizes how these practices disproportionately harm poor people and trap the most vulnerable members of our communities in a cycle of oppression and poverty. We fight to identify, attack, and ultimately dismantle the policies, laws, and narratives that contribute to this unequal treatment and allow entities to profit from this captive market.
Our recent and ongoing cases include:
In Glendale, Arizona, two ordinances passed in 2022 that directly banned panhandling, or asking for donations in public. Poverty is visible in much of the area, where homelessness increased by 50% between 2019 to 2024. We filed a case on behalf of 3 impacted Glendale residents challenging these ordinances because one discriminates based on the content of speech, which is a violation of the First Amendment. The ordinances ban flagging down a car to ask for a dollar but not doing the same thing to ask for directions. Asking for help shouldn’t be a crime.
When a person is arrested, under the law they are presumed innocent until they are proven guilty. In 2024, 88% of people in Riverside’s jails were pretrial, meaning they have yet to be convicted of any of the charges against them. The case alleges that every day in Riverside County, individuals are confined in jails, based solely on their inability to pay arbitrary, pre-set bail amounts. The case also challenges the unnecessary delay between arrest and an individual’s first court hearing. These individuals are detained because they simply do not have the resources to pay for their freedom.
We filed a class action lawsuit on behalf of several people who were incarcerated in LA County Jails because they and their families could not afford to pay the arbitrary amounts set by the bail schedule. In Spring 2023, the LA Superior Court issued a historic ruling that ensured people arrested for minor, non-violent offenses would no longer be detained in LA County Jails pre-arraignment because they are unable to afford cash bail.
Leticia Roberts, a mother of 3 living in Iowa, faced an impossible decision: use her fixed income to raise her children or send money to the Black Hawk County Sheriff for pay-to-stay fees so that he could spend it on cotton candy and ice cream machines for his officers. We sued the sheriff on her behalf, arguing that the process the Sheriff uses to collect these jail fees violates the law and that our clients with limited, fixed incomes cannot afford to pay these alleged fees.
Across the United States, hundreds of jails have eliminated in-person family visits and replaced them with expensive video and phone calls. We filed a lawsuit in Port Huron, Michigan against the Sheriff, the County, and the billion-dollar company profiting from these expensive calls because violating a child’s right to hug their parents is a violation of constitutional rights. Families are not a revenue source. We filed this case alongside S.L. v. Swanson as a part of the Right 2 Hug project.
In Flint, Michigan, we filed a lawsuit on behalf of a group of children and their parents who were harmed by the ban on family visitation at the Genesee County Jail. This historic case raises essential constitutional questions, including – can the government ban children and parents from visiting each other if one of them is jailed even though the policy only serves the purpose of earning money for the jail and its partners? We filed this case alongside M.M. v. King as a part of the Right 2 Hug project.
You can read more about our legal work challenging anti-homelessness laws, jail visitation policies, or browse our case database.
If you believe you may have a case that Public Justice should know about, please click here to send our legal team details.
Our work goes beyond the courthouse. As advocates fighting against the criminalization of poverty and the abuses of the criminal legal system, we fight to empower people – including families, Black and Brown communities, and incarcerated people – to organize for change in the criminal legal system. Working with advocates and partner organizations, we engage in policy advocacy and public education to improve the laws and practices that govern the current system.
Our Team
Learn more about the Debtors’ Prison Project team:
Special thanks to
for their generous support of the Public Justice Debtors’ Prison Project.