A nine-month Guardian investigation has revealed that when a landlord evicts someone in Louisiana, they can choose to file the eviction in a venue where a portion of the court fee goes directly into the pocket of the judge. The Guardian found one justice of the peace in the suburbs of New Orleans who may well be the highest paid judge in the country. His court took in nearly $1m in revenue last year – and he personally took home over $400,000. Somehow, this is all legal. Kai Wright speaks with Guardian US southern bureau chief Oliver Laughland and data editor Will Craft about the real-life ramifications of this system for tenants, and Laughland and Craft explain how they dug through more than 11,000 pages of eviction records to discover this little noticed judicial system that evicts thousands of people a year. A former judge called the system ‘blatantly unconstitutional’Oliver Laughland and Will Craft’s Guardian investigation on the ‘big business’ of evictions Continue reading…
