1st Edition

Oppressed by Debt Government and the Justice System as a Creditor of the Poor

Edited By Saul Schwartz Copyright 2022
154 Pages 9 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

154 Pages 9 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

154 Pages 9 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

This edited collection brings together essays that explore personal debts to government. Intensive collection efforts by governments in need of revenue often cause hardship, whether it is the poor in the United States going to jail because of unpaid fines, low-income English people being evicted because they paid their council taxes but could then not pay their rent, or poor former students... Read more

Introduction 

Saul Schwartz and Joseph Spooner

Chapter 1. Benefits Overpayments and the Criminalisation of Female Poverty

Samuel Kirwan

Chapter 2. The Local Austere Creditor

Joseph Spooner  

Chapter 3. Criminal Justice Debt and The Return of Debtors’ Prisons

Neil L. Sobol

Chapter 4. Student Debt in the United States: Racial Disparities and Wealth

Fenaba R. Addo 

Chapter 5. Reducing the Burden of Student Loan Repayment: A Canada-US Comparison

Christine Neill

Biography

Saul Schwartz is a Professor in the School of Public Policy at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada. He holds a PhD in Economics from the University of Wisconsin. Broadly speaking, his research involves the analysis of policies aimed at helping the poor. That work currently involves investigations of the prevalence of payday loans among the liabilities of bankrupt individuals, the economic stress experienced by international students during the COVID pandemic and this volume on debts-to-government. His paper entitled "Who Doesn’t File a Tax Return?: A Portrait of Non-Filers," co-authored with Jennifer Robson, recently won of the Vandercamp Prize for the best paper submitted in 2020 to the journal Canadian Public Policy.