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Friday, October 11, 2019

How Prison Crushes Ex-Offenders With Debt

Prison makes it nearly impossible to hold onto savings and earn money. But it's a great place to take on debt.

Creditors don't push pause while someone's incarcerated. And because many people don't have the money for lawyers or bail, those costs turn into debt owed to family and friends after release.

In Marc Wilson's case, he had assets and plenty of savings before his seven-year prison sentence for drug trafficking began. By the time he was released in March 2019, he had nothing — except around $50,000 in delinquent child support.

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6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Then behave your damn self and you won't have anything to worry about.

Anonymous said...

Excuse me for not giving a crap about a person who had a good job and was making 90k a year had 20k in savings and was locked up for trafficking drugs! You played the stupid game now you get the stupid prize.

Anonymous said...

Boo hoo!

Anonymous said...

Northwest Woodsman: How sad! Just a businessman trying to make his way in the world and those nasty police just ruined it for him..

Anonymous said...


A modest proposal.

We tally the cost of having a felon in jail each year, bundling ALL the costs at their prison. When released after completing their sentence, or paroled, they are presented a bill. When they have repaid 50% they can apply to have voting rights restored. If restored we write off the other half of the bill.

It's a start and better than what we're doing now.

Anonymous said...

Northwest Woodsman: I want to take another pass at this one. I’m thinking that with all the money he made in his pharmaceutical business, he should have contributed generously to an investment program and 401k. He would be in great financial shape now. Difficult to feel sorry for this guy and I am really curious about the author of the article and their motivation.