TOPEKA, Kan. – Convicts who can’t pay court-ordered restitution are fed up with their lifetime of supervision by a Kansas county and have sued to stop it.
Four plaintiffs filed a class action lawsuit against Kansas and Johnson County on Oct. 30 in federal court over a state law that sets a five-year limit on all on probation periods except for the poor and for sex offenders. They are challenging it as unconstitutional.
Johnson County judges’ “practice of extending probation indefinitely for failure to pay restitution allows the same punishment for the indigent person who commits forgery or theft as for persons who commit sexually violent crimes,” the lawsuit says.
The American Civil Liberties Union of Kansas filed the case, along with attorneys from Willkie Farr & Gallagher in Chicago. A press release calls it a “punishment of their poverty.”
Their plaintiffs are subject to searches of their persons and possessions without a warrant because their probation is limitless. They must report every time they cross state lines, can’t eat in restaurants that serve alcohol and are subject to surveillance and urine tests.
They also can’t vote until they pay the restitution and probation is lifted. This turns the court into a private debt collector, the ACLU says.
One plaintiff was convicted of identity theft and sentenced to 18 months of probation and $76,000 in restitution – at $50 a month.
Another was convicted of computer crime and theft and has a $7,631 tab. The two remaining plaintiffs were ordered to pay $17,000 and $38,600. Subsequent hearings after initial probation terms expired extended them as the probationers were faced with prison for not paying those debts.
“In each plaintiff’s case, the defendant judges failed to conduct a hearing to determine whether Plaintiff had the ability to pay outstanding restitution,” the suit says.
“In each plaintiff’s case, as was their normal practice, the defendant judges extended not just the obligation to pay restitution, but to comply with all other conditions of probation.”
The law violates the plaintiffs’ Fourth Amendment rights to privacy, equal protection rights and places “a bad of involuntary servitude or slavery upon Plaintiffs based on their indigency,” the suit says.
