Debtor's Prison? Seriously?!

CJR's Ryan Chittum picks out a WSJ piece about - of all things - debtor's prison in the US.
The WSJ points out "More than a third of all U.S. states allow borrowers who can't or won't pay to be jailed."

The money quote:

Your hundreds of billions of dollars of bailouts at work:

In September 2009, Jeffrey Stearns, a concrete-company owner, answered a knock at the door from a Hancock County, Ind., deputy sheriff. The deputy was holding a warrant to arrest Mr. Stearns for not paying $4,024.88 owed to a unit of American International Group Inc. on a loan for his pickup truck.

After being handcuffed in front of his four children, Mr. Stearns, 29 years old, spent two nights in jail, where he said he was strip-searched and sprayed for lice. Court records show he was released after agreeing to pay $1,500 to the loan company. “I didn’t even know I was being sued,” he said, though he doesn’t dispute owing the money. “It’s the scariest thing that ever happened to me.”

AIG, of course, got hundreds of billions of dollars in bailouts from taxpayers. Now it’s having those taxpayers thrown in jail. Nice.

Yeah, Nice.