Article by For Liberty Staff.

El Paso County Colorado is the perfect example of the failures of the criminal justice system in America.

According to Ed Krayewski of Reason, the county jails people, at a cost of $88 a day, for their inability to pay a $55 pre-trial fee.

One woman, Jasmine Still, a 26-year-old mother with a newborn, was jailed for 27 days. This jail time cost the county nearly $2,400. That means taxpayers footed the bill for over two thousand dollars, all so the county could punish a woman who did not have the financial means to pay a $55 fee.

The ACLU stepped in and sued on behalf of the nearly 300 people this corrupt government policy effected. As a result, a judge ordered that the practice be stopped, and the court return to the original purpose of making sure actual justice is served.

Image Credit: By St. Louis Circuit Attorney’s Office (Own work) [CC BY-SA 4.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)], via Wikimedia Commons