Texas Woman Jailed for Overdue Library Books

She owes over 200 dollars worth of late fees, thats a lot of books.

You take 200 dollars worth of anything and you will get in trouble over it. Add on top that she doesn't show up for a court apperance and the only outcome is jail.

Source of AOL article:

...Baytown police said Jessekah Few, 25, failed to appear in court on charges related to the unreturned library property.

She was arrested on outstanding warrants.

"It's not a very common charge," said Detective Alan Cliburn with the Baytown Police Department.

Cliburn said several arrests have been made for similar outstanding warrants.

"It's part of the deal, part of the agreement that you enter into. It's just like anything else -- you can't take something that doesn't belong to you and just hold onto it," Cliburn said.

The library director said charges are only filed if someone has more than $200 of library property and repeatedly ignores requests to return it.

Cliburn said that is exactly what happened.

Few's charge is a class C misdemeanor, the equivalent of a traffic ticket.

Originally posted by ProtoplasmicTraveler
So did this woman really steal 200.00 in books? All we know is that the library won't pursue it unless a $200.00 threshold has been reached. The truth is the cost of the books might be as low as 10.00 in this case too. Maybe nothing if the books were donated to the Library.

This is up to the judge to decide, not you and I. And she didn't give the judge that chance to help her.
Act dumb and see what good it does for you.

Originally posted by buddhasystem

Originally posted by ProtoplasmicTraveler
So did this woman really steal 200.00 in books? All we know is that the library won't pursue it unless a $200.00 threshold has been reached. The truth is the cost of the books might be as low as 10.00 in this case too. Maybe nothing if the books were donated to the Library.

This is up to the judge to decide, not you and I. And she didn't give the judge that chance to help her.
Act dumb and see what good it does for you.

Wow you must really hate this guy then!

He never told a lie, as the story goes. So maybe if he were alive today, President George Washington could tell a New York City library what he did with two books he checked out 221 years ago.

The two books -- weighty discourses on international relations and parliamentary debates -- were checked out on October 5, 1789

articles.cnn.com...:LIVING

That sounds like a lot more than 200.00, how should we pillory him for this? Change the name of Washington D.C. perhaps, take down all the statues of him in the nation? Change the textbooks to brand him as a common theif?

Where is your outrage for this crime?

Dual standards?

reply to post by airspoon

...If you think about it, we have so many laws on the books, that everyone pretty much breaks the law at some point, even if by accident. This gives the authorities a power to persecute anyone....

Thank you for pointing that out because that is the real issue here. There are so many laws and regulations now on the books that NO ONE can possibly keep up with the NEW laws and regs much less the existing laws and regs.

That is why Lawyers specialize in tiny parts of the law. Think about it. Obamacare alone was over 2000 pages and that isn't even the regulations that it allows to be written!

The US government is the largest Employer in the USA by a long shot. That alone should tell you something.

We are at the point where almost EVERY ADULT over the age of 25 can be put in jail for something if soneone digs hard enough. And that is the whole point.

Scare the poop out of everyone to keep them in line.

The U.S. incarceration rate on December 31, 2008 was 754 inmates per 100,000 U.S. residents, or 0.75%.[6] The USA also has the highest total documented prison and jail population in the world. en.wikipedia.org...

The US has incarcerated more of it's own people than any other known civilization in history. Both per capita and in sheer numbers (2 mil and counting).

And still, on this site, in this thread, people are willing to bend over and say thank you afterwards.

Originally posted by ProtoplasmicTravelerDo you have a source that displays the average length of time it takes someone to pay there fines, or is this more self serving guess work on your part in promoting the over litigous police state?

Just wondering!

Honestly, no source. However, it's reasonable to assume that most people either return books on time, return them late (and intact) and pay the fine, or pay the fine to replace the book. I've never seen a library with empty shelves.


As for your George Washington analogue above, apparently NY doesn't see the need to prosecute Mr. Washington as likewise I'm sure the Baytown police would not have jailed this individual were she no longer living.
So, no double standard required.

I'm sure that if this woman had gone to the library and explained the fire, they would have allowed her to simply replace the books at cost. Her mistake was leaving it for seven years. That is seen as theft.

ETA: And skipping her court date, whether or not she agreed with it, was a bad idea.

reply to post by crimvelvet


Excellent post and this is what many people are missing. Our jails should be reserved for people who are actually a true danger to society. Most of the people in them are non-violent offenders of victimless crimes, that simply impinge on a select portion of the populations strict morality, and allow the state and corporations to profit off their incarceration even though they represent no real threat to society, you or me.

In this case we are basically dealing with a case of debt. Debtor prison was outlawed centuries ago.

Chances are this is a woman living paycheck to paycheck, maybe even struggling to feed a family and is in no position to pay the fines, which are really fines and not reflective of the actual cost of the lost property.

So in reality what we are doing is waging a war on the poor, often in ways designed to make them even poorer, by fining them and penalizing them for infractions that really have hurt no one.

It's absurd, and frightening so many people aren't willing to deal with the bigger issues involved here.

Divide and conquer, divide and conquer!

Given its Texas, I thought you went to jail for reading books not connected to the bible. As for owing money, not attending court ect, well she’s lucky not to have met Bush as he switches on the electric chair. One can only assume that if she was black they might have charged her with arson (and possibly “reading” too!).

Seriously in addition to another young person being traumatised by jail (and possibly corrupted by it) the fact is they would be better spending the money, used up on her jail time, on err… books!

Originally posted by PeasantRebellion
The US has incarcerated more of it's own people than any other known civilization in history. Both per capita and in sheer numbers (2 mil and counting).

And still, on this site, in this thread, people are willing to bend over and say thank you afterwards.

I know. Most other countries in history just would execute you and be done with it.

You stole bread? Cut his hand off and let him go home to die.

Grind your own grain? Set his farm on fire and let him wander the woods to starve.

Looked at the princess? Poke your eyes out of your head and leave him on the corner to beg for food.

Yea, we are such monsters.

Originally posted by InvisibleAlbatross
I'm sure that if this woman had gone to the library and explained the fire, they would have allowed her to simply replace the books at cost. Her mistake was leaving it for seven years. That is seen as theft.

ETA: And skipping her court date, whether or not she agreed with it, was a bad idea.

edit on 8-12-2010 by InvisibleAlbatross because: (no reason given)

She claims to have documented evidence of the fire, so though it's never a good idea to assume we can probably assume she did attempt to explain it the library.

However it's not the library that makes the call to take someone to court, but the city's attorney who files the charges and presses the case.

This is simply agressive code enforcement meant to collect 'fines' to fill the city's coffers.

Originally posted by Becoming

Originally posted by PeasantRebellion
The US has incarcerated more of it's own people than any other known civilization in history. Both per capita and in sheer numbers (2 mil and counting).

And still, on this site, in this thread, people are willing to bend over and say thank you afterwards.

I know. Most other countries in history just would execute you and be done with it.

You stole bread? Cut his hand off and let him go home to die.

Grind your own grain? Set his farm on fire and let him wander the woods to starve.

Looked at the princess? Poke your eyes out of your head and leave him on the corner to beg for food.

Yea, we are such monsters.

Please list examples as proof. I can source mine, can you? MOST other countries? Let's assume we're comparing apples to apples and compare most democracies, shall we? After you.

reply to post by ProtoplasmicTraveler


1) I couldn't care less of what Washington did. Were he put in jail -- fine, now it's too late anyhow
2) What part of flipping the court don't you understand? Let's say I would be for MJ legalization and emptying the prisons on that grounds, but -- as many said -- flip the court and you must suffer consequences. I really don't see how it doesn't sink.

reply to post by ProtoplasmicTraveler


There wouldn't have been any fines if she went to court and said this is what happened.

Nothing to collect except what was owed, if anything, before the fire. You are wrong this time around, its time to admit that she was wrong and that is why she is in jail.

Originally posted by Liberal1984
Given its Texas, I thought you went to jail for reading books not connected to the bible. As for owing money, not attending court ect, well she’s lucky not to have met Bush as he switches on the electric chair. One can only assume that if she was black they might have charged her with arson (and possibly “reading” too!).

Seriously in addition to another young person being traumatised by jail (and possibly corrupted by it) the fact is they would be better spending the money, used up on her jail time, on err… books!

"Christian" charity never ceases to overwhelm me. Texans can raise hundreds of thousands of dollars to get Iraqi Muslim children "Jesus colloring books" for their school bags, but couldn't help this woman out with her library fines after her home burned down and claimed the books.

Our priorities are so out of wack in this country it's not even funny.

Thanks for joining in.

Originally posted by Becoming

Originally posted by PeasantRebellion
The US has incarcerated more of it's own people than any other known civilization in history. Both per capita and in sheer numbers (2 mil and counting).

And still, on this site, in this thread, people are willing to bend over and say thank you afterwards.

I know. Most other countries in history just would execute you and be done with it.

You stole bread? Cut his hand off and let him go home to die.

Grind your own grain? Set his farm on fire and let him wander the woods to starve.

Looked at the princess? Poke your eyes out of your head and leave him on the corner to beg for food.

Yea, we are such monsters.

Typical evasive copout we see too often in these matters.

"Suzie stole three cookies from the cookie jar, I only stole one, so compared to Suzie, I am a Saint!"

For some people "good" is not really good enough, for some people "ok" or their perception of it, seems to be.

I know people will say the below video is not pertinant to the OP article, but I disagree


Proto let me know if you want me to take the video out, I can edit it no prob.

But just as a few atoms come together to form a life, a few useless arrests also leads to what the video describes.

You have all been too integrated into the system that now you are part of the system.


Never in the civilised world have so many been locked up for so little
[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/039440e09a36.gif[/atsimg]
[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/bc82e22f987c.gif[/atsimg]

The Below Article is written by Edwin Meese III
Edwin Meese III was U.S. attorney general under President Reagan, and is chairman of the Center for Legal and Judicial Studies at the Heritage Foundation

• A 12-year old girl arrested and handcuffed for eating one French fry on the Washington subway system.

•  A cancer-ridden grandmother arrested and criminally charged for refusing to trim her hedges the way officials in Palo Alto, Calif., were trying to force her to.

limited criminal law served a teaching function. It reflected the beliefs and understandings common to the vast majority of our citizens — the very citizens who were subject to the criminal law.

Today, the criminal law has grown as broad as the regulatory state in its sheer size and scope. In 1998, an American Bar Association task force estimated that there were more than 3,000 federal criminal offenses scattered throughout the 50 titles of the U.S. Code.

Just six years later, a leading expert on overcriminalization, John S. Baker Jr., published a study estimating that the number exceeded 4,000. As the ABA task force reported, the body of federal criminal law is “so large . . . that there is no conveniently accessible, complete list of federal crimes.”

If “ignorance of the law is no excuse,” then every American citizen — literally, every single one — is ignorant and in peril, for nobody can know all the laws that govern their behavior.

www.heritage.org...

reply to post by PeasantRebellion


You're saying that everything I listed never happened or are you just being hard headed?

Either way, I don't care if you believe what I posted. Even if I was going to find sources (I'm not by the way) I would have listed them in my first post.

Originally posted by ProtoplasmicTraveler

Originally posted by Becoming

Originally posted by PeasantRebellion
The US has incarcerated more of it's own people than any other known civilization in history. Both per capita and in sheer numbers (2 mil and counting).

And still, on this site, in this thread, people are willing to bend over and say thank you afterwards.

I know. Most other countries in history just would execute you and be done with it.

You stole bread? Cut his hand off and let him go home to die.

Grind your own grain? Set his farm on fire and let him wander the woods to starve.

Looked at the princess? Poke your eyes out of your head and leave him on the corner to beg for food.

Yea, we are such monsters.

Typical evasive copout we see too often in these matters.

"Suzie stole three cookies from the cookie jar, I only stole one, so compared to Suzie, I am a Saint!"

For some people "good" is not really good enough, for some people "ok" or their perception of it, seems to be.

I was responding to him saying that we imprison more people then in the history of the world.

What we do is better then what was done a long time ago. Not perfect, but a whole lot better. Now get off your righteous high horse and quit kissing the butt of the only person who really agrees with you.