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The Story was produced at North Carolina Public Radio - WUNC and was heard on over 100 stations.Visit The Story web site to listen to this program and for more details, archives, show highlights and more podcasts. UPDATE 1.13.2020: The Story web site has been decommissioned and is in the process of being archived. It may return at a later date.

Locked Up In A Modern-Day Debtors’ Prison

Painting: Prisoners Exercising by Vincent van Gogh
Pushkin Museum of Fine Art, Moscow, Russia

Most of us don’t expect to be sent to jail for failure to pay our parking tickets. But in several counties across Ohio, courts are jailing men and women who cannot afford to pay their fines.

Dick Gordon, host of The Story, speaks with Jack Dawley, who’s been to jail three times for failure to pay. He says he’s never seen a judge or been given any opportunity to explain to a judge that he simply cannot afford to pay.

Dawley has filed a complaint with the American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio, and together they are changing what they say is an outmoded – and unconstitutional – practice.

Hear the full conversation at The Story's site. Also in this show: Christopher Cassucio, whose “Strike Debt” group is aiming to erase people’s debts, answers listener response; and Anna & Elizabeth, the guitar-and-banjo duo that makes movies called "crankies."

Before coming to North Carolina Public Radio to host The Story, Dick Gordon was host of The Connection, a daily national call-in talk show produced in Boston, from 2001 to 2005. Gordon is well-known in the profession as an experienced, seasoned journalist with an extensive background in both international and domestic reporting. He was a war correspondent and back-up host for the CBC's This Morning, a national current affairs radio program. An award winning journalist, he has also served as a Parliamentary reporter, Moscow correspondent and South Asia correspondent for both radio and television.
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