Abstract
The authors describe how American law has slowly shifted away from imprisoning debtors before an official judgement, a practice they inherited from England. Several states modified the law to allow the debtor to prove honesty, established a minimum to the debt before imprisonment, and excluded women from imprisonment for debt. Tocqueville and Beaumont especially condemn Pennsylvania debtor laws, which increase the total number of imprisoned unnecessarily.
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© 2018 © Translation by Emily Katherine Ferkaluk
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de Beaumont, G., de Tocqueville, A. (2018). Appendix No. 7: Imprisonment for Debts in the United States. In: On the Penitentiary System in the United States and its Application to France. Recovering Political Philosophy. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-70799-0_14
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-70799-0_14
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Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
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