​The High Cost of Being Poor

Struggling with poverty is hard enough on its own, but many of America’s poor now face an array of costs that wealthier citizens often don’t incur.

Take the rise of for-profit probation companies, which more than 1,000 courts across the U.S. use. The companies engage in an “offender-funded” model of privatized probation, meaning that poor Americans who can’t afford to pay a traffic ticket up-front are charged additional fees, sometimes doubling the cost of the original fine, in order to pay off the fine over a longer period of time.