Jail time for debts?

[alberto2005]

Hello, readers!

I keep reading and reading in this forum and elsewhere, "No, in this country (USA), you don't go to jail for failing to pay your debts". This has led me to wonder, for curiosity and for informative purposes, which industrialized nations allow for jail time for non-payers of a debt(s)? How is the situation in Western Europe, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand? Does anybody know?

Albert L.

[FoolAndHisMoney]

Not sure of the answer, but I'll bet that the backwards, dirt poor, nations that promote tyranny (mostly in the middle east) throw their citizens in jail which is why they are dirt poor to begin with. They don't allow for some risk like our great country does, so their citizens are all afraid to take any risks and business never prospers leading to poverty.

[alberto2005]

Hello, FoolAndHisMoney!

Thank you for your response.

Yes, I know that in some developing countries a person can go to jail (or receive threads to go to jail) if s/he seriously fails to pay on, let's say, credit cards. However, this is a different scenario than that of industrialized nations, and hence my question. Setting aside all developing countries, how is the situation in nations in Western Europe, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and other nations in the industrialized world? My bet is that laws in this respect are similar in the United States in compariosn to other industrialized nations, but I may be wrong.

Albert L.

[amonduul]

A year or two I heard in the news about an idea to re-instate the concept of the poorhouse in this country. Type "poorhouse" in a search engine, and you'll find out that there were many of them dotted around the countryside in the United States until roughly the 1930's, when the Social Security program was implemented.

People fell into debt and wound up in the poorhouse in those days--simple as that! There were also poorfarms where (apparently) people can work to repay their debt to society. I don't know how folks wound up in the poorhouse--whether it was a court order or whatever...and whether they were run like prisons or ???

It seems most of the sites that come up when you type in "poorhouse" relate to preservationists trying to restore the historical buildings that served as poorhouses and not much of the legalese about how people wind up there, and the circumstances on how they got admitted, and what they had to do to get out. Sounds more to me like what we might call a homeless shelter these days.