A ticket to debtor's prison

>> Do people who won't pay their fines deserve to go to jail?

by JOHN EDMONDS

In Quebec, if someone lets their tickets for parking, driving or bylaw infractions pile up unpaid, ignores official summons and hides from the bailiff, they'll get a prison warrant--which could see them sent off to jail to pay their debt to society at the taxpayers' expense.

The warrant probably wouldn't even be executed until the next time they got stopped by the cops, be it for squeegeeing or burning a red light. But if it does happen that the police look in their computers and spot the warrant, they only give two choices: pay the full amount within a few hours--or it's off to jail.

Are the deadbeats just getting what they deserve? Certainly many people might think so--while others argue that it's discrimination against the poor. But regardless of one's point of view, it's easy to find cases that suggest that this provision of Quebec's Penal Code is not without its risks.

On May 6, 35-year-old Sylvain Gravel killed himself in Bordeaux prison, hours after being incarcerated for an outstanding $1,500 fine for vagrancy and court costs. Gravel was a substance abuser and had just been released the day before from prison on a minor assault charge. Discrepancies between the coroner's estimate of the time of death and the accounts of prison officials suggest Gravel may have been hanging from a fixture in his cell for hours before being discovered.

On May 19, Jonathan Rogers, a 35-year-old Lachine mechanic, was nabbed during a routine security check at a passport office for over $25,000 in unpaid traffic tickets (again the total includes accumulated fees and court costs). Rogers was immediately given a sentence of two years and two months--calculated at roughly $30 per day--without the benefit of appearing before a judge. Because the prison term was over two years, Rogers was transferred to a federal penitentiary. He told the Gazette that he was stuck in a cell for three days during a prison riot and that another inmate tried to stab him with a pick. He also claimed he had been away from Montreal for six years and was unaware of the prison warrant.

Gotcha, grandpa

Many of those who have spent time in jail talk about how much more miserable it is for the frail and elderly.

Boris--not his real name--is in his early seventies and has two steel knees that make walking up and down stairs an impossibility. He also has acute arthritis, for which he had operations in his right hand last November. He needs help with simple tasks like bathing and getting dressed, although he can still drive a car--which was his downfall.

"They had taken away my license for unpaid tickets, but I was still driving for quite a while, actually. I thought they had forgotten about me. Well, on December 29, the police asked to see my license," he says. "When I told them I didn't have one, they gave me a ticket. And when they looked in the computer, they saw the warrant for the $8,700 for unpaid tickets. They were very nervous and embarrassed, and stayed two hours trying to figure out what to do. But I didn't have the money, so in the end they had to take me off to prison."

Boris' stint at Bordeaux from December 29 to January 8 wasn't much fun. "There was some kind of riot on New Year's Eve, people were burning their mattresses, there was smoke and yelling and the riot squad came in," he says. Although he was housed in the infirmary, he says he only got four physiotherapy sessions in the time he was there, instead of the minimum of 27 the doctors had ordered for his recovering hands.

"There were murderers in the same room as me. Some of the guys started to make trouble for me, but I know how to handle people," he says, mentioning his background in the Canadian Navy and as a salesman. "In the end, they called me 'Petit Papa.'"

Boris was released for medical reasons after only 11 days, less than the mandatory one sixth of his 244 day sentence that he would normally have served.

A likely story

What galls him most, Boris says, is that he would gladly have worked off his fines through community service, but the city denied him this option. "In 1995 and 1996, I went three times to the municipal court at Gosford and asked them to make an arrangement. They said I could pay it off at $100 month, but that was too much for me--I was unemployed, and only had my disability pension. So I asked them if I could do community work, but I was rejected," he says. He also points out that as a man who speaks 11 languages he would definitely have been able to do something, if only on the telephone. "No one ever told me that I was in danger of going to jail," he says.

Sylvie Desjardins, who runs the ticket-paying window at Montreal's municipal court, says that Boris' story sounds implausible in some respects. She says that the city always sends notices of an impending prison warrant. Desjardins also said Montreal will offer repayment schemes of as little as $15 a month. "But most people who get to that point still don't pay. I have a big drawer full of bad cheques from this year alone," she says.

Desjardins and other city officials told the Mirror that it takes at least two years before a ticket case will result in a prison warrant. "And even longer if a person agrees to a repayment scheme, as then the collection process is stopped. They can miss up to three months without a penalty. And even after that they can start a new repayment scheme," Desjardins says. "The whole process can be dragged out for up to five years. Jail really is the final recourse."

City officials say their hands are tied when it comes to alternatives to incarceration. "If people have less than around $6,000 in seizable goods we can't take their possessions," says Claude Théorêt, in charge of executing judgments at Montreal's municipal court. "And if they need their car for work, we can't take that either."

Community service is only offered to those receiving welfare, says Desjardins.

Just a lot of noise?

While Ontario's approach to dealing with ticket offenders is similar to Quebec's, British Columbia has seen its system of prison terms for non-payment of fines overturned by a recent case--involving a barking dog. According to Patsy Shear of the Vancouver police's legal department, a number of old Vancouver bylaws could theoretically invoke sanctions of a prison sentence, including one about loud barking. These provisions hadn't been enforced for decades, but last year someone ticketed for a noisy pet--and who objected to being fined--took their case all the way to B.C.'s Supreme Court.

"The court ruled that the possible danger of imprisonment over your dog barking violated the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, and struck down the law. This affects all our similar municipal laws," Shear says.

But she says that even prior to this recent case, people arrested for negligence in fine payment were only served with a bench warrant, meaning they were brought before a judge and not sent automatically to prison.

Nova Scotia also has a more lenient approach. "We definitely believe that if people defy the courts they should be punished," says Fred Honsberger, executive director of correctional services for the province of Nova Scotia. "But we like to offer community service. In Nova Scotia you will almost have to refuse community service before you're put in prison for tickets. We haven't found anybody who we couldn't find some work for. We do this to avoid the whole idea of a debtor's prison."

Denis Coulombe, spokesperson for Quebec's Ministry of Justice, says Quebec is open to alternatives to prison terms, but incarceration must remain the final option for those who don't cooperate.

Coulombe adds that this whole issue relates to other government departments, such as public security and transport.

"The fact that we considered a new system with the Société de l'assurance automobile du Québec, where instead of going to jail, people couldn't renew their license if they had unpaid driving fines, shows that we are open," Coulombe says.

The plan was cancelled last year, but some expect it to be resurrected in a long-awaited overhaul of Quebec's correctional system first announced in 1996. The idea was supposedly to rid the prisons of all but those who are a danger to society--or have committed serious offences.

Since then, however, the number of people serving terms in Quebec prisons for traffic, highway and bylaw infractions has steadily increased.

MUC Police could not say how many of the 26,000 warrants issued by Montreal last year for non-payment of tickets were executed. But according to a study released by Quebec's correctional services department last December, almost 50,000 Quebecers were sentenced in 1997-98 to terms of less than 30 days for non-payment of highway tickets--excluding offences covered by the criminal code.

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