For more than 150 years, debtors prisons have been illegal in the United States. However, that restriction only applies to private debts; a recent study found that between 2005 and 2018, eight thousand Wisconsin residents were jailed for failing to pay court debts each year. We talk to John Gross, director of the Public Defender Project at UW Law School, about the causes and consequences of modern-day debt imprisonment.
University Communications