By Sofia Nelson
The ACLU of Michigan has been working to abolish modern-day debtors’ prisons for the past seven years. As part of this work, I have observed courts and represented clients throughout the state, from Muskegon to Port Huron. Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
No place, however, has resonated with me like the tiny Detroit suburb of Eastpointe, where the constant incarceration of people too poor to pay fines—many of them black—eerily reminds of the sort of exploitative court practices recently uncovered in Ferguson, Mo.
The ACLU of Michigan has been working to abolish modern-day debtors’ prisons for the past seven years. As part of this work, I have observed courts and represented clients throughout the state, from Muskegon to Port Huron. Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.

No place, however, has resonated with me like the tiny Detroit suburb of Eastpointe, where the constant incarceration of people too poor to pay fines—many of them black—eerily reminds of the sort of exploitative court practices recently uncovered in Ferguson, Mo.