13 inmates held for inability to pay probation fees win release in class action suit
Two Tennessee judges have ordered the release of 13 inmates in Murfreesboro who were being held because they couldn’t pay fees to a private company overseeing the misdemeanor probation system.
The judges acted last Friday, a day after a federal judge in Nashville issued an injunction in a class action accusing Rutherford County and the probation company of extorting probationers, the Daily News Journal reports. The Sentencing Law and Policy blog notes the story.
The plaintiffs alleged that the county jailed them without taking into account their inability to pay, violating their 14th Amendment rights. U.S. District Chief Judge Kevin Sharp ruled (PDF) that the plaintiffs were likely to succeed on the merits of that argument and granted an injunction.
“A preliminary injunction is an extraordinary remedy never awarded as of right. But the injustice perpetrated here is that: extraordinary,” Sharp wrote. An earlier story by the Daily News Journal and the Murfreesboro Post have coverage of the decision.
The plaintiffs were represented by Equal Justice Under Law, a public interest law firm launched by two Harvard law grads with grants from the school’s “social entrepreneurs” program.
See also:
ABA Journal: “Privatized probation becomes a spiral of added fees and jail time”
