Poor won't be jailed in Alabama town because they can't pay court fines

Something similar happened to my ex girlfriend. She and her roommate were at Walmart one night, and realized they left the money in the car. They walked out, not setting down a single bag of chips they had in their hand. Halfway to the car, they were stopped by a police officer, who was having none of their excuses. He arrested them for shoplifting after the store manager was adamant about pressing charges.

They each were given probation and ~$1000 fine (for a $1 bag of chips...). These are broke college students, and my gf's father wasn't in the position to be able to pay it. Of course, they ended up with warrants out for their arrest.

I should note that these are 2 white sorority girls (not that it should matter) who just recently moved to a new city to transfer schools. They don't have jobs, but quickly start trying to find them. This takes a bit, and by the time either of them finishes training etc. they have a warrant out for their arrests. They still need the vast majority of their just starting out waitress minimum wage to, you know, live, but they want to get the fines taken care of as quickly as they can.

They start calling the police department/county/prosecutor, who redirect them in circles. I tried to help with this, and even with a case number etc., not one person had any fucking clue how much the fine was with late penalties and other fees or what they needed to do to start paying it. The synopsis is that they need to bring the full dollar amount in immediately to have a CHANCE at not getting arrested on the spot. No payment plan or anything like that.

At this point, they cannot even figure out how to make payments, are living in fear of an arrest warrant, and are steadily owing more fines and late fees and warrant processing fees and other bullshit. The roommate got arrested at one point after being pulled over. They allowed her to serve her time on the weekends, but she lost her job. It didn't take long before she started taking her clothes off in front of a webcam for money, which kept her fed and allowed her to serve far less jail time ($1000 at ~$20 per day is 6 months of weekends). She failed out of school from all this and still strips. Congratulations, America! We did it! Wait...

My ex ended up dodging warrants and barely scraping by for close to two years before finally being able to pay the fine off and move on. She still is fighting to get her drivers license fully reinstated, however. She also failed out of college and developed a pretty serious self medication problem that landed her right back in trouble. The stress basically tore apart our relationship and impacted them both in an extremely negative way. It makes me sad to think about it

/r/news Thread Parent Link - al.com