Got Debt? SWAT Teams, Jail Could Await

Most Americans have grown up believing that debtor's prisons are a thing of the past. They believe that not paying your bills is a civil offense; if you owe money to someone, you might have your wages garnished, but you will not go to prison because of money trouble. That has been true for most of my life, but recent events have been disturbing. There have been a few recent cases of people going to jail for owing money that have made news in the past year; even more disturbing, there has been a recent case where SWAT teams broke down a man's door because his estranged wife was delinquent on her student loan debt. These cases may be extreme and rare, but they do illustrate an alarming trend where businesses and the government are going to more extreme measures to collect the money owed them.

Debtor's Prison and Sewer Service

A recent article in Wall Street Journal discussed how some people are being jailed because they owe money and have chosen not to or are unable to pay. Most of these people received a summons to go to court and failed to appear; however, in rare cases, people received "sewer service", where the process server doesn't actually deliver the summons but lies and says that they did (a friend of mine did get sent to jail for trespassing after receiving sewer service). In most cases, bail was set at the amount of money that the debtor owed. The amount of people that have been threatened with arrest for their debts has increased during the recent financial crisis, which should not be surprising.

SWAT for Student Loans

In a recent case, a SWAT team was called in by the Department of Education to try to collect a student loan debt in Stockton, California. They broke down the door at a man named Kenneth Wright's house. This man didn't even owe the student loan debt in question: his estranged wife did. He and his three children were put in a police car while officers searched his home. The search warrant issued allowed the police to collect documents such as computers, financial documents, and related documents. While at this moment, this seems to be an isolated incident, it does set a disturbing precedent. Are we headed towards terrorizing people (and their family members) in order to collect money? The Department of Education denies that the SWAT team was called out because the wife owed money, but the warrant claims that the crimes were for financial aid fraud, theft of government funds, wire fraud, false statement to a government agency, and conspiracy, which could technically have been committed if the wife had taken out the government loan without the intention of paying it back.

Presumed Innocence, Carelessness

This increasing trend of treating debtors like criminals is disturbing. Yes, people should pay their debts, but in the United States, debt has not previously been a jailable offense. A recent poll that I took indicated that most people agree with me that debt should not become a jailable offense.

Another problem that is disturbing is how police officers are carelessly apprehending the wrong people in an attempt to go after presumed criminals. There was no reason to handcuff Kenneth Wright and put him and his three children in a police car; he had nothing to do with the "crime" or the debt. As he was not the subject of the search, if they had to search his home for his wife's financial aid fraud, couldn't they have sent him out of the home for a while? Was it necessary to treat him as if he was under arrest? Unfortunately, the search warrant only listed the address of the home in question; it did not list who was suspected of committing the crime. Perhaps this is another example of carelessness in the execution of the law, just as "sewer service" is a form of carelessness.

The Fourth Amendment of the United States Constitution is supposed to protect its citizens from unreasonable search and seizure. When police terrorize individuals because of a spouse that owes a debt, or arrest someone that has not been notified that they need to appear in court, it seems as if this amendment has been violated.

Sources:

Department of Education Search Warrant

Johnson, C., and Paynter, Leigh. "Questions Surround Feds' Raid of Stockton Home". News10.net, 8 June 2011.

Silver-Greenberg, Jessica. "Welcome to Debtors' Prison, 2011 Edition". Wall Street Journal, 17 March 2011.