Debtors’ prisons might sound like something out of a Dickens novel, but what most Americans do not realize is that they are alive and well in a new and startl

One of our foremost economic thinkers challenges a cherished tenet of today’s financial orthodoxy: that spending less, refusing to forgive debt, and shrinking

Introduction : From deadbeat to deadbroke -- Making men pay -- The debt of imprisonment -- Punishing parents, creating criminals -- The imprisonment of debt --

For Londoners of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, debt was a part of everyday life. But when your creditors lost their patience, you might be thrown int

Debt was an inescapable fact of life in early America. At the beginning of the eighteenth century, its sinfulness was preached by ministers and the right to imp