How Rising Inequality Has Widened the Justice Gap
Rising inequality has harmed low-income families not only by depriving them of a fair share of society’s income growth, but also in a more specific way: It has stacked the legal system even more heavily against them.
According to a recent survey, more than 70 percent of low-income American households had been involved in eviction cases, labor law cases, and other civil legal disputes during the preceding year, and in more than 80 percent of those cases they lacked effective legal representation.
Indigent persons charged with crimes are entitled to state-sponsored lawyers, but here, too, funding shortages are widespread.
The stakes in criminal proceedings are often enormous, but civil disputes often produce life-shattering outcomes as well.
That’s why Congress created the Legal Services Corporation in 1974, a nonprofit whose mission is to support civil legal aid for low-income citizens. But the Legal Services Corporation was never adequately funded. And in the ensuing decades, rising income inequality has contributed both to a reduction in the supply of legal assistance to low-income families and an increase in the need for it.
.....the Legal Services Corporation, which received more than $860 million in 1981, received only $385 million in 2017(both in 2017 dollars).
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A disabled friend was charged with a crime he physically could not have committed (Dr's assessment). A store security camera and a store manager reinforced that he was not guilty. Still the judge told him that if he couldn't prove himself INNOCENT he was going to jail. Is this justice for all? of course not. There are two systems of justice in America. One for the rich and one for the poor.
Rising inequality has harmed low-income families not only by depriving them of a fair share of society’s income growth, but also in a more specific way: It has stacked the legal system even more heavily against them.
According to a recent survey, more than 70 percent of low-income American households had been involved in eviction cases, labor law cases, and other civil legal disputes during the preceding year, and in more than 80 percent of those cases they lacked effective legal representation.
Indigent persons charged with crimes are entitled to state-sponsored lawyers, but here, too, funding shortages are widespread.
The stakes in criminal proceedings are often enormous, but civil disputes often produce life-shattering outcomes as well.
That’s why Congress created the Legal Services Corporation in 1974, a nonprofit whose mission is to support civil legal aid for low-income citizens. But the Legal Services Corporation was never adequately funded. And in the ensuing decades, rising income inequality has contributed both to a reduction in the supply of legal assistance to low-income families and an increase in the need for it.
.....the Legal Services Corporation, which received more than $860 million in 1981, received only $385 million in 2017(both in 2017 dollars).
************************************************************************
A disabled friend was charged with a crime he physically could not have committed (Dr's assessment). A store security camera and a store manager reinforced that he was not guilty. Still the judge told him that if he couldn't prove himself INNOCENT he was going to jail. Is this justice for all? of course not. There are two systems of justice in America. One for the rich and one for the poor.
