Being incarcerated in the United States prison system is a worst-case scenario for millions accused of crimes across the country, including Utah. The ramifications of a lengthy sentence aren’t just emotional and physical — there are financial implications to consider as well. Damage done to earning power for inmates who serve their time can make it impossible to recover fully and reintegrate into the community. Our Salt Lake City Criminal defense attorneys open a small window into the challenges these men and women face. Read on to learn more about how criminal convictions can damage your credit score in Utah. You can reach out to the legal team at Overson & Bugden for help.
Does a Prison Term Show Up in My Credit Report in Utah?
A prison term may have negative implications for your credit score, but it will not actually appear on a credit report. Your credit score is not directly impacted by your incarceration. Instead, your incarceration will create problematic financial situations that may lead to a lower credit score over time. While you wait in prison, you might continue to rack up bill payments that are all going unpaid. The longer you are in prison and the more unpaid bills you accumulate, the worse off your credit score will be when you are released.
The idea of managing your finances is probably the furthest thing from your mind if you have recently been sentenced to prison. However, existing bills are not put on hold even if you are unable to pay them from a prison cell.
How Does Prison Time Damage Your Credit Rating in Utah?
Serving a prison term does not directly damage your credit score. It is not something that appears on a credit report. Things like arrests, criminal charges, and convictions are not used to calculate your credit score. However, civil actions against you might appear on your credit score. It is crucial to have someone helping you handle your finances from outside of prison if you want to avoid a plummeting credit score. Hiring a Riverton City criminal defense lawyer to help you is an excellent place to start.
Credit Card Payments
Even if you’re behind bars for just 12 months, the harm done to your credit rating could take a decade or more to dig out from completely. Bills, including credit cards and auto loans, go unpaid while you’re sitting in a cell unable to work and continue to accumulate interest along with compounding fees. If you do not have anybody on the outside who can help you cover your bills until you are released, you are looking at possibly years of late, unpaid bills. Notices might show up in your mail at the jailhouse indicating seizures of property and foreclosure. Declaring bankruptcy when you’re released from prison might be the only way to avoid wage garnishments and liens.
In addition, credit card companies might cancel your credit cards if they find out you are incarcerated. While this means you will not have any late bills to worry about, cancelation of credit card will negatively impact your credit score.
Your best option is to contact any credit holder to whom you still owe payments and explain your situation. You should try to pay off and close as many credit accounts as possible. Credit holders may also agree to place you on a payment plan or otherwise work with you to help you avoid things like foreclosures, property seizures, and a spiraling credit score.
Loans and Mortgages
While incarcerated, you obviously will not be working and earning a normal income. Even if you have someone on the outside to help you pay your bills or you are working while incarcerated, that money can quickly run out. Having no livable earnings while in prison often leaves people with debt they can no longer afford to pay off. This could be debt from purchasing a home, credit cards, and student loans. People with debt they cannot afford to pay may find themselves selling off their possessions just to pay the bills. This can also lead to foreclosures on homes, bankruptcy, and defaulting on loans and lines of credit. Foreclosures and defaults will all cause your credit score to plummet. Declaring bankruptcy once you are released from prison will only make it harder to rebuild your credit score.
Deferring Your Bills and Payment in Utah
One way to try to avoid financial strain while incarcerated is to contact any credit card companies or other people you may owe money to and ask about having your payments deferred. It is possible that you can put your credit accounts on hold, so to speak, while you are in prison. This way you won’t have any unpaid bills and your credit score will not take a nosedive. If deferment is not an option, you may be able to work out a reduced payment plan that is easier to keep up with.
How the Loss of Professional Licenses or Credentials Can Impact Your Credit Score in Utah
A criminal conviction large or small — from a DUI to a drug-related charge — can cause professional licensing organizations to strip you of your credentials, effectively ending your chosen career. One second you’re a surgeon with privileges in Utah’s finest hospitals, and the next you can’t get work in a soup kitchen. This action often results in diminished earning potential over your entire life, unless you find an employer willing to take a chance on you and look past your criminal record. For many, that act of kindness never happens, and they toil away in low-earning positions unable to provide for their families as effectively as those without strikes against them.
People who lose their professional license may find themselves starting over in new careers. It can be difficult to find work when the only thing you are qualified to do is no longer available to you. Crippling debt, bankruptcy, and poor job prospects create a perfect storm of bad credit that leads many into poverty. Finding a good West Valley City criminal defense lawyer who can help you manage your finances while you serve your prison term can greatly reduce the damage taken by your credit score.
How Increases in Insurance Premiums after a Conviction in Utah Can Affect Your Credit
If you receive a conviction for a traffic-related offense, including driving under the influence, say goodbye to your affordable insurance premiums. Insurers will jack your auto coverage through the roof because of your perceived risk making it almost impossible to find affordable insurance. Add in your already lower earning power because of your conviction and driving a car with any semblance of coverage becomes an impossibility. The added cost to drive doesn’t even factor in the mandatory minimum 18-month license suspension in Utah. Even if you somehow find a job, it better be within walking distance. The dominoes just continue falling making it harder and harder to become a member of the community you’re supposed to belong to. Does this sound like rehabilitation?
Disadvantages of Having a Poor Credit Score in Utah after Criminal Charges
A poor credit score can act as a barrier in a number of different financial situations. Any major purchases, such as a home or a car, will most likely require a credit check. The odds of securing a loan from the bank to make your purchase go down the lower your credit score is. Not only that, but even renting an apartment becomes difficult if you have poor credit.
People with poor credit are often unable to secure the finances they need on their own. Most often, they will need a co-signer, or someone to sign for a loan with them. Even still, some people may be distrustful of someone with such low credit and refuse to help you even if you get a co-signer.
The Importance of Relentless Criminal Defense Can’t Be Understated
When you’re charged with a crime in Utah or any other state, your life is quite literally on the line. Everything you’ve worked for could be gone in a hazy moment, and you might not ever get it back. Having an experienced Utah criminal defense lawyer by your side to look out for your rights has never been more important.
If you or someone close to you is facing indictment or charges related to a serious criminal offense, including DUI or drug-related issues, contact Overson & Bugden today to get help. Call (801) 758-2287 to schedule a free legal consultation regarding your case. I’ll come to you day or night.
The stigma of a criminal conviction can vary by its severity and the nature of the charges. None carry more social branding and public scorn than a sexual offense. Lawmakers and the public cry for the need for greater public safety all while restricting freedoms of those who have served their sentences and are attempting to put the past behind them. Utah’s registration laws are on par with the worst in the country, which is why those accused of these crimes need a relentless Salt Lake City criminal defense lawyer on their side.
Protected Areas Deny Access to Public Grounds
Rules for sexual offender registrants in Utah (Title 77 Chapter 27 Section 21.7) deny them access to public grounds, including parks, on the off chance children may gather in these areas. Other areas, including shopping malls, may also be off-limits to the offenders because of the prospect for child contact. How are these people supposed to buy groceries, clothes, and other essentials when they can’t even walk into a store because children might be inside? The ludicrous nature of the law’s wording invites (or dares) those under its thumb to break it out of necessity and in doing so they risk further prosecution. Being in a “protected area” in Utah is a Class A Misdemeanor.
Registration Requirements Can Lead to Additional Charges
Visiting Utah as a sex offender is often just as difficult as living in the state as one. Statutes require anyone visiting the state who is on another state’s registry to also register with Utah authorities if they’re visiting for 14 straight calendar days or a total of 30 days in a calendar year. That means someone traveling to the state for business purposes may have their name, photograph and personal information plastered all over the Internet by local authorities when they’ve done nothing wrong. It’s overtly punitive and provides no rehabilitative value.
Encouraging Isolation Over Rehabilitation
Lawmakers designed these statutes to isolate offenders and make it more difficult to have access to their victims. In doing so, they’ve closed the noose so tight around these men and women that they can have virtually no contact with their own family members and may have to live miles away from them in order to comply with registration requirements. Isolation and depression do not foster healthy living and they do not make the community safer. Marginalizing a group of people after they’ve served their debt to society says more about the society than it does those they choose to label.
Then, we have to think about the wrongfully accused. Those who have done nothing wrong and are forced to endure at least a decade of scorn and humiliation because of circumstantial evidence, outright lies and indignant prosecution. Brian Banks, now a 28-year-old linebacker with the Atlanta Falcons, famously spent more than a decade as a sex offender in California due solely to the false testimony of an accuser who later recanted.
If you, or someone you love, has been accused of a sex crime, including sexual assault or rape, you need a strong legal defense to get these charges dismissed, reduced, or to win your acquittal. Contact our law offices today for an immediate consultation with our legal team – (801)-895-3143. We make emergency jailhouse visits any time of day or night.
Did anyone watch the arraignment of (former) New England Patriots tight end Aaron Hernandez? Riveting stuff. Every major news outlet had a direct line into the courtroom’s webcam, which fixated firmly on the star athlete, who appeared in handcuffs and the same white t-shirt he wore when authorities pulled him from his home in the Boston suburbs. What took place during the arraignment is a textbook example of what many defendants experience, often for the first time, when going through the criminal justice system. Often, the seriousness of the charges defendants face is just as important as the presence (or absence) of a criminal record.
Securing Bail for Clients is Vital
Obtaining bail for a defendant is integral to keep their spirits up and get them back with their family during what will be one of the most stressful times in their lives. As anyone who saw the Hernandez arraignment noticed, the judge presiding in hearing denied him bail sighting the gravity of the charges against him – murder in the first degree. His attorney lobbied passionately nonetheless for his release, citing his client’s willingness to accept and comply with whatever restrictions the court required of him.
The length of trials involving defendants who remain incarcerated for court proceedings are also shorter because the right to a speedy trial takes more a precedence. The longer a defendant remains behind bars, the more urgent the need for a resolution to the charges against them becomes. This can manifest in less time to prepare for trial, in part because the person who stands accused wants to get things underway. Naturally, the prosecution wants a defendant in prison as both a means to create the illusion of public safety and to strike a blow to the psyche of the defense.
Labeling the Accused as a Flight Risk?
In cases where defendants have a degree of notoriety, the argument that they present a flight risk is a thin one at best. This is the age of instant information and cell phone cameras. This isn’t Roman Polansky fleeing the country to avoid prosecution, but a famous athlete with instant name and face recognition. GPS monitoring would’ve easily satisfied any concerns by the state regarding Hernandez’s risk of absconding, though again the seriousness of the charges voided any arguments to the contrary.
Facing Charges of Violent Crime
In most states, the accused retain the presumption that they will appear as directed for trial if released on their recognizance – given bail. However, the charge of a violent criminal offense, particularly premeditated murder, trumps this presumption and leaves it up to the individual judge to decide. In Hernandez’s case, the judge felt in the public interest to deny him bail. He could’ve decided the other way, though I don’t believe it was for lack of effective argument by the defendant’s defense team.
In Utah, the right to bail is a constitutionally protected right under Article I section 8 of the Utah Constitution and a statutory right under Utah Code Annotated section 77-20-1. Exceptions to this right to be admitted to bail are (1) when the defendant is charged with a capital offense (i.e., a death penalty case), (2) when the person is charged with a felony committed while the defendant was on probation or parole for a previous felony, (3) when the person is charged with a felony supported by substantial evidence and there is clear and convincing evidence that the person would constitute a substantial danger to any other person or is likely to flee the jurisdiction, and (4) where the person is charged with a felony supported by substantial evidence to support the charge and clear and convincing evidence exists that the person violated a material term of their release while previously out on bail.
The right to bail in Utah is more substantial in Utah than in other states because the drafters of the Utah constitution had lived through a period where many of their church leaders had been rounded up and held without bail by a judge who held a particular animosity toward those of the LDS religion. Of those leaders incarcerated without bail was Brigham Young. As you might suspect, having their church leader and prophet behind bars without the possibility of bailing him out left much of the Utah populations with a healthy suspicion of government’s power to charge, incarcerate and convict. That is, it was well understood in Utah that the power to deny bail was an awesome one that could be abused.
If you, or someone you love, are facing serious criminal charges, you need the services of an experienced Salt Lake City criminal defense lawyer to get those charges dismissed or win your acquittal. Contact our law offices today for an immediate consultation with our legal professionals – (801)-895-3143. We also make emergency jailhouse visits around the clock.
