What happens when a 22-year-old single mother of two toddlers who can’t afford to pay a court fine fails to complete 62 hours of community service instead?
For Alejandra Corro, it meant being sentenced to serve nine days in Valley Street Jail in Manchester by Judge Thomas E. Bamberger in the 9th Circuit Court, Nashua District Division, on March 4, 2014.
That was after Public Defender Ryan Guptil told Bamberger that Corro had completed only 20 hours of the 62 hours of community service because of a significant fire in her home that forced her to move six weeks earlier. (Click on story to hear court hearing audio.)
“How did that stop her from doing the community service?” Bamberger asked, according to a court transcript of the hearing.
Corro wasn’t alone, according to an ACLU-NH’s report released Wednesday (Sept. 23) entitled “Debtors’ Prisons in New Hampshire.”
The report estimated that in 2013 about 148 people who were unable to pay their fines were jailed without a meaningful hearing on their ability to pay, which cost taxpayers across the state about $166,870 to address an estimated $75,850 in unpaid fines that were never collected.
“Not only are these courts violating the law, they are actually causing the government to lose money doing it,” said Gilles Bissonnette, legal director of the ACLU-NH.
“These practices are legally prohibited, morally questionable, and financially unsound. Nevertheless, they appear to be alive and well in New Hampshire,” added Bissonnette.
The full audio and print transcript of Corro’s March 4, 2014, hearing are below:
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