The crime of owing more than you’ve got
Bankrupts pay their debt to society by not paying their debt to society
Image: Marshalsea Prison, Southwark, by Francis Hopkinson Smith. Public domain.
Democracy is freedom under the law, plus a law that applies equally to all. That’s democracy. Nowhere has democracy. Even the age limit on voting is an incursion on democracy. Explain to a six-year-old that they may choose who makes the rules for them, and they will understand. The reason why six-year-olds don’t have a vote is because we don’t think they’d cast votes responsibly and would be too easily influenced. Just like commoners who are not members of the aristocracy; like non-landowners; like those aged under 23, or is it 21? Or 18? Or, in some places now, 16? Or like the unforisfamiliated; like women (who also in times past couldn’t be trusted to decide court cases as members of a jury, or be judges, or be members of parliament; or to own property; who, in some countries, cannot drive a motor car). Some people just can’t be trusted, so we skew democracy to take account of the irresponsible members of our society. But never do we skew it against ourselves.
The main objection to prisoners voting can’t be their tendency to vote for criminals, surely? Is it the idea of according them the pleasure of voting? In Australia, Belgium and Egypt, everyone must vote, it’s an offence not to. Voting is a duty imposed by law on some, and a privilege denied by law to others. Anyhow, criminals would certainly never be allowed to stand for election; even if some might transpire to be a bit shady, few candidates advocate swashbuckling around with guns in their pockets. (Well, in some places, maybe.)
No, the objection is surely having to transport prisoners’ votes from penitentiaries to polling stations. The possibility of fraud somewhere on the road, let alone transporting the prisoners to the polling station. But nowadays, people vote electronically, so, why not grant the incarcerated a vote as part of their rehabilitation, their reintegration into the society that they harmed? If rehabilitation is an aim of incarceration, the farther one excludes the convict from regular society, the harder it will be to re-incorporate them back into that society. Yes … if.
Bankruptcy was once a crime that could see you put in prison. It’s still an ignominy. In principle, it is a legal institution that allows those who choose badly in commerce in terms of sector, location, partners, or simply get robbed, to put their financial ills behind them and have another go. Insurance is a device intended to pool risk among a group of persons who incur a similar risk, like house owners, car drivers, operators of businesses. Whether the pooling function actually works is open to debate, but, if car drivers are obliged to insure their liability towards those they collide with on the road, why couldn’t insurers pool the risk of over-adventurous mercantile practices? In fact, they do, except, unlike with cars, it’s not compulsory, and who checks a company’s insurance cover before placing an order?
Belgium has just reduced the minimum share capital of a closed company from 18,000 euros to two. Just as in the UK: two £1 shares is all you need to set up business. And that’s all the capital you need to guarantee your liabilities to those you trade with. Eighteen thousand euros is not that much, but you needn’t be Einstein to figure out that it’s 17,998 more than two. If my corporate liabilities exceed two euros, I can file for bankruptcy and leave my creditors without a red sou. But, I keep my right to vote.
If prisoners are thought rightly to be denied a right to vote because they chose badly and made decisions that go against the best interests of society, why, then, are bankrupts not barred from voting? Is theft less acceptable than bankruptcy—fraudulent or otherwise? Is bankruptcy not also clouded with an element of dishonesty, or a sense of reprehensibility, akin to the unchecked wagers of an over-confident gambler?
Bankruptcy laws vary from country to country but, basically, a bankrupt, once discharged, has a clean slate. They may be barred from carrying on certain professions, but this rarely prevents them from setting up a new business, if it is a business that they own that has gone bankrupt. Most jurisdictions will not confiscate a bankrupt’s tools of trade, and what those are can extend to far more than a hammer and chisel. The melodramatic image of a penniless seamstress exclaiming to a bailiff, “Take my TV, take my waterbed, but leave me my sewing machine!” does occasionally correspond to the truth, but it’s rarely practitioners of cottage-industry trades that go bankrupt.
Most low-income people don’t go bankrupt because it’s not worth their while. They need to pay an insolvency practitioner, whose fees will, if not covered by the government, usually be prohibitive, because they will exceed the net asset value of the bankrupt; which is usually why they’re bankrupt. The wealthy are more able to afford bankruptcy, especially if their indebtedness is incurred under corporate cover, and some even adopt bankruptcy as a business model, though few will contemplate it unless the losses thereby to be written off amount to a very large sum. Hundreds, and possibly thousands, of creditors get stiffed owing to big-business slip-ups, unless, as I say, the whole sorry story wasn’t intended to end in bankruptcy from the outset.
The ability to wipe one’s hands of one’s financial liabilities is one of the great iniquities of democracy, whereby the wealthy are told, “Better luck next time; here, have another chance,” whereas those on a low income are told they will be paying off their high-interest indebtedness for the rest of their lives and, if it’s not paid off by then, the debt will pass to their heirs.
Rudyard Kipling extolled the virtue of quietly accepting one’s losses in his poem If—:
If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss; …
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!
It’s quite a feat to make a heap of all you have, risk it in some venture, lose and never tell anyone. But bankruptcy proceedings do somewhat help in mitigating the loss, except that part which is suffered by your creditors, and, whilst they don’t necessarily reap the Earth and everything that’s in it, the loser rarely ends up on the breadline.
Perhaps debtors’ prisons like Charles Dickens’ at Marshalsea have a certain attraction for housing some bankrupts. As things currently stand, that might at least indirectly get the undischarged bankrupt off the electoral roll. Not democratic, but a heck of a karma.