CATCH-22
There are people in Rikers Island for failing to pay the fines and fees issued in previous court cases. The same is true at jails in every major city and small town in America.
Tony Messenger is the metro columnist at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. His first book, Profit and Punishment: How America Criminalizes the Poor in the Name of Justice (St. Martin’s Press), came out Dec. 7.