Does Probation for Profit Criminalize Poverty?

http://www.npr.org/2014/02/07/273041871/does-probation-for-profit-criminalize-poverty


    I found this NPR interview Chris Albin-Lackey who is a researcher for the Human Rights Watch. The interview brings up a new movement in Mississippi, Georgia and Alabama that puts you at risk for jail time and probation if you can not pay your fines for small misdemeanor offenses and sometimes even speeding tickets.
    The interview shows us how this kind of private probation is another way in which poverty can be an inescapable hole. For the people who can not pay their fine in whole at the time of their court date, a probation period is issued to give them time to pay off the fine. However, the private companies that monitor the probation and the fines are able to profit off of these fines. The longer it takes an offender to pay off their fine the more money they end up paying for the fine. In other words the poor pay a higher cost for their fine than the wealthier who are guilty of the exact same crime.
    Even scarier is the fact that jail time is too often the outcome for the citizens who can not afford to pay their fine in time. In the interview they state that jailing someone for not being able to pay a fine is unconstitutional. However, the problem with this is is that the offenders are usually not aware of their own rights. Statistics show that education levels are much lower in impoverished communities. We learn our rights in school and most of the impoverished community did not have have the opportunity to learn their own rights.  So when you give someone who is unaware of their rights the choice of either paying their fines or going to jail even though they can not afford to pay their fines they of course are going to choose the fine. Thus throwing them into a long ordeal of overpaying for a small offense only because they are unaware that they are being threatened with false pretense.
    The Probation for Profit sector is using poor citizens who they know can not defend themselves or afford high ticket prices, to make money for their own pockets. This is just one example of how our society is criminalizing poverty.