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 The settlement calls for the city to pay each of some 60 named
individuals $125 for every day they spent locked up under a
since-repealed ordinance that allowed incarceration of offenders who
failed to pay fines for otherwise non-jailable offenses.
The deal, providing for an estimated total payout of about $100,000,
was announced in separate statements by the American Civil Liberties
Union (ACLU) and Colorado's second-largest city.
The case grew out of an ACLU study last year finding that despite
the outlawing of so-called debtor prisons, judges in the city of
440,000 routinely converted fines into jail sentences, said Mark
Silverstein, legal director of the group's Colorado chapter.
 "We hope today's settlement sends a loud and clear message to
municipal courts throughout the state to stop using jail or the
threat of jail to collect debts from persons who are too poor to
pay," Silverstein said in a statement.
The settlement heads off a potential lawsuit against the city over
so-called “pay-or-serve” sentences that have been the source of
litigation in other states.
In October, the ACLU sued the city of Biloxi, Mississippi, in
federal court over the issue, accusing the city of employing debtors
prisons as an “illegal revenue generation scheme” that targeted the
poor.
Last March, the U.S. Justice Department said it would issue federal
guidelines for municipalities on the issue after finding the city of
Ferguson, Missouri - the St. Louis suburb convulsed in 2014 by a
white policeman's fatal shooting of an unarmed black teen - made
widespread use of the practice.
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One of the indigent Colorado Springs offenders, Shawn Hardman, was
sentenced to jail on four occasions after he was unable to pay fines
for panhandling citations.
“I was trapped in a cell that it seemed like I could never get out
of,” Hardman said in an ACLU statement. “I was told over and over
that I either had to pay or go back to jail. I was homeless and
jobless, so the cycle kept repeating.”
Colorado Springs Mayor John Suthers, the state’s former attorney
general, said the city halted the practice last year after reviewing
results of the ACLU study and will work to educate prosecutors and
judges about the policy.
(Editing by Steve Gorman)
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