Nebraska's Debtor's Prisons

Medieval British Debtor's Prison:

Modern American Debtor's Prison:

I imagine the conditions at the Lancaster County, Nebraska Detention Center are better than they were at St. Briavel's Castle in England (pictured above). The food is surely better (after all, St. Briavel's Castle is in England). There are surely fewer rats. And you don't generally have to stay very long in an American debtor's prison. Just until you can post bond or until the collections attorney who had you arrested gets around to conducting a debtor's exam. But I'm getting ahead of myself. First, a short primer on how this works.

Here's how to get sent to jail for owing money in Nebraska:

• Apply for, and receive, a credit card.
• Use the credit card, run it up to the limit, say $500.
• Lose your job. 
• The Credit Card company will start sending you letters, with an increasingly urgent tone and font-size, but will not take any legal action for at least 6 months, because that's about how long it takes for the "default interest rate" on the credit card (often more than 30% annually, compounded -- it's all in that tissue-thin piece of paper with the very tiny print that came with your card called "Cardmember Agreement" or the like, which of course you never read), to push the total dollar amount up to one that is worth suing over. 
• Once that $500 hits $1500 or $2000 (or whatever this particular credit card company's "guidelines" specify), they will sue you. You may be served by a sheriff's deputy or a "constable" (who will probably just leave a note on your door and ask you to come down to the station house to pick up some papers, which you may or may not ever get around to doing. Or, you may be served by certified mail, or, (and this is a fairly recent development), UPS or FedEx. 
• You blow it off. And don't tell me you won't, because I know you will. Okay, maybe not you, specifically. Maybe you're one of the one percent who files a written response to a credit card lawsuit, requiring them to get a summary judgment against you, rather than a judgment by default. But it really doesn't matter. They will beat you in the end.
• After 30 days, the credit card company's lawyer will sign a large stack of affidavits, requesting judgments in dollar amounts the credit card company says it is owed. One of them will have your name on it. The attorney won't notice your name, because she does not actually read these affidavits, except to check for obvious computer-generated errors. One of her assistants will notarize them later and a "runner" will take them to the courthouse and have them filed.
• A few days later, you'll get a postcard from the court. There won't be a picture on it, just a dollar-amount that will probably shock you.
• Now the credit card company can garnish your wages, if you have any. Or your bank account, if you have one. They can take ("non-exempt") property from you and sell it. 
• How do they know where you work, or where you bank? How do they find out what property you might have that they can take?
• They schedule a debtor's examination. 
• You are summoned by sheriff to appear in court on a certain date and at a certain time and to bring with you certain papers and be prepared to answer questions under oath. And if you fail to appear, a warrant will be issued for your arrest.
• They can't be serious, right? You toss this paperwork with the rest and forget about. (Don't do this, by the way. It's a very bad idea.)
• And a couple weeks later, you're driving home from a friend's house and you get pulled over for having a broken taillight. You'd been planning to get that fixed, just as soon as you got your next unemployment check, but that's not until Tuesday. You curse yourself silently, but figure, what the hell, you'll probably just get a warning, a "fix-it" ticket. And you'll definitely get that taillight fixed right away.
• Instead, you are immediately arrested and taken straight to jail, because there is a warrant out for your arrest, and yes, they were serious.
• So now you're in jail because you spent $500 on a credit card and couldn't pay it (and for being an idiot for not going to court when you were summoned to appear). Now you owe them over $2,000 and still can't pay it. And you're in jail. And you can't fucking believe this is happening. But it is. It is happening every single day to people just like you in Lincoln and Omaha (and elsewhere in the state, on a smaller scale).
• You can't bond out, because you have no money, so you sit in jail until the next scheduled debtor's exam. (In Lincoln, they are every Friday morning at 8:30 in courtroom 21; in Omaha, they are every morning, except Thursdays, at 9:00 in courtroom 20.) 
• So, depending on whether you were arrested in Lincoln or Omaha and on which day you were picked up, you will spend between one and six  nights in jail.
• When the day of the examination hearing arrives, you are led, with the other debtors, in orange jumpsuits, your shackles linked together by a chain, into the courtroom, where an attractive young attorney goes from one of you to the next asking where you work and where you bank and whether you own or rent your home, and the whole thing takes no more than five minutes, and then you are "processed" and released.

You sign the paperwork acknowledging that your personal belongings weren't stolen from you while you sat in jail, which you're not really sure of because you don't remember what was in your pockets that night, but it's not like you'd make a stink about that even if something were missing. You get dressed and step outside and squint in the noonday sun, and think to yourself, "Well, at least I've got my freedom."

Except, not really. Because you still owe that credit company more than $2,000, and that pretty attorney lady? She can do this all over again tomorrow, and she will if the credit card company tells her to. Next time, though, you'll probably show up in court the first time. 

And that's how a credit card company can put a person in jail in Nebraska in 2013.