Lincoln resident Glenn Sharp spent most of his 20s and 30s sitting in county jail, and he figures he wouldn't have been there if he just had the money to pay his fines and back child support.
Homeless, divorced, addicted and struggling to pay child support, Sharp was regularly jailed to make up his overdue payments. When he racked up fines for shoplifting, assaults and drinking in public — fines he takes responsibility for but says were connected to being homeless — he ended up sitting each one out in jail.
Sharp, now 51, has stayed out of jail for more than five years and hopes a new Nebraska law requiring judges to consider a person's financial status before assigning fines or setting bail will help others like him. He can see the bridge he lived under for three years from the kitchen window of his apartment, and he looks at it daily as a reminder of where he has been.
"I know what it's like sitting in the jailhouse, and that place sucks bad," he said.
The law, signed by Gov. Pete Ricketts, will require that any person who fails to pay a fine in time appear before a judge instead of automatically sitting out the fine in jail. Judges could choose to dismiss the fine or assign up to 20 hours of community service instead, and the rate for sitting out a fine would increase from $90 to $150 a day.
Advocates hope the law, parts of which take effect later this year and parts in 2019, will reduce the number of people sitting out fines. Such inmates served a combined 56,000 days in the Lancaster County jail last year and cost the county $5.6 million, public defender Joe Nigro said.
