From The Marshall Project on a tip that led it to a little-known program that affected hundreds of poor workers. 

By Anna Wolfe and Michelle Liu

The tip we got at Mississippi Today seemed a little unlikely: a woman in state prison was also working at McDonald’s—and not voluntarily. But sure enough, we found Dixie D’Angelo, a woman with court-ordered debts of $5,000 because she damaged a friend’s car. She had been sentenced to something called a restitution center, where she worked four different restaurant jobs to try to earn enough to pay off her debts and get out of jail. 

Two reporters, Anna Wolfe and Michelle Liu, ultimately found that hundreds of people were in similar situations because of the state’s little-known restitution center program. Basically, we discovered, Mississippi was running a modern-day debtors prison.

We met with inmates and their employers across Mississippi, beginning at fast food restaurants around Jackson, traveling to the Mississippi Delta and the Gulf Coast. We found people using court documents and a list of work-camp inmates that the corrections department later removed from its website.

We interviewed more than 50 current and former restitution center inmates and a dozen national experts. We filed 30 public records requests. Using more than 200 sentencing orders, we built a database detailing how judges ordered people to the centers and how much money they had to pay.

Continue reading @ The Marshall Project.

How We Investigated Mississippi’s Modern-Day Debtors Prisons

From The Marshall Project on a tip that led it to a little-known program that affected hundreds of poor workers. 

By Anna Wolfe and Michelle Liu

The tip we got at Mississippi Today seemed a little unlikely: a woman in state prison was also working at McDonald’s—and not voluntarily. But sure enough, we found Dixie D’Angelo, a woman with court-ordered debts of $5,000 because she damaged a friend’s car. She had been sentenced to something called a restitution center, where she worked four different restaurant jobs to try to earn enough to pay off her debts and get out of jail. 

Two reporters, Anna Wolfe and Michelle Liu, ultimately found that hundreds of people were in similar situations because of the state’s little-known restitution center program. Basically, we discovered, Mississippi was running a modern-day debtors prison.

We met with inmates and their employers across Mississippi, beginning at fast food restaurants around Jackson, traveling to the Mississippi Delta and the Gulf Coast. We found people using court documents and a list of work-camp inmates that the corrections department later removed from its website.

We interviewed more than 50 current and former restitution center inmates and a dozen national experts. We filed 30 public records requests. Using more than 200 sentencing orders, we built a database detailing how judges ordered people to the centers and how much money they had to pay.

Continue reading @ The Marshall Project.

3 comments:

  1. Interesting. America is full of strange ways...

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  2. That link doesn't correspond to the story but I'd be very interested to see the ethnicity of those inmates. Seems like modern day slavery to me. They are incarcerated AND expected to work to repay a debt?

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    Replies
    1. Steve - try it now - I changed it. Not sure what happened but thanks for letting us know

      Delete