The Return of Debtors Prison

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP)
Inmate Anthony McCoy was told to remove the jewelry from his teeth before heading to jail, but he said it was cemented to his teeth and couldn't be removed.

McCoy ended up spitting out blood and teeth after a sheriff's lieutenant reached into his mouth and yanked out the grill, according to McCoy's attorney David Raybin.

Raybin says the enamel on his client's front four teeth were ripped off and he was denied proper medical treatment afterward.

McCoy was arrested in November and brought to the jail for not paying child support.

Lawyers in Nashville have worked out a settlement of $95,000, which is schedule d to go before Nashville's Metropolitan Council on Tuesday evening.

The sheriff's lieutenant was demoted and suspended.

While I've heard of women being assessed child support, I've never yet known of one hauled off to jail in handcuffs for not paying it. But this is becoming an increasing problem for men, who can end up spending years behind bars for not bearing the costs of their children's mothers' independent lifestyles. The men who voted for Female Suffrage in 1919 could not have foreseen that their grandsons would be locked away in debtors prison just because their granddaughters had the vote. But all changes to the status quo have consequences that are not only unintended, but usually unforeseen.

Now that a jailer's job is more or less mob enforcement, it's no longer a surprise that a jailer should act like a mob enforcer. And there's one thing the article doesn't mention--another unforeseen consequence of Female Suffrage.

The jailer that assaulted Anthony McCoy was a woman.