$1 or Two Months

As an eye-opening example of a state where justice is often colored by the condition of a defendant's pocketbook, Justice Goldberg might well have mentioned Georgia, where one out of every 434 citizens is behind bars--as against a national ratio of one out of every 1,000. Of the more than 5,000 Georgians imprisoned in state institutions each year for misdemeanors, 40% are locked up simply because they are unable to pay small fines. Examples: -- A 17-year-old girl got one year for having two jars of moonshine in her house; the alternative fine was $100. -- A woman got two consecutive one-year sentences on drunkenness charges; the fines would have come to $75. -- A man got two months for driving without a license; he was unable to pay a $1 fine.

But the broke may soon be getting a better break. Governor Carl Sanders has been urging reform of the state's penal laws, and a bundle of ten Sanders-backed reform bills have been introduced in the legislature. One of them, just passed by the state senate and likely to win approval in the lower house, provides that a sentence to a state penal institution "cannot be imposed solely because of the inability to pay a fine."

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