Sorry, but IMHO this is just another entire level of governmental stupid…..

HatTip RashoMom –   PENNSYLVANIA – There’s no doubt that Ferris Bueller’s Day Off is one of the most iconic films from the 1980s. Ferris skips school, goes to a Cubs game, drives a Ferrari, gets the gorgeous girl, and outwits Principal Rooney. But would we have been laughing if Ferris’ mother had been thrown in jail because of her son’s truancy and ended up dying there?

That’s exactly what happened to 55-year-old Pennsylvania mom Eileen DiNino. The unemployed mother of seven didn’t have the wealth of the fictional Bueller family, so she was unable to pony up $2,000 for truancy fines that her kids racked up for missing school.

Although the federal government outlawed debtor’s prisons in the 1830s, last Friday DiNino, who lived in Berks County, an hour northwest of Philadelphia, was tossed in a jail cell to serve out a two-day sentence.

A cause of death is still to be determined, but law enforcement officials didn’t give DiNino the high blood pressure medication she needed. She was found dead in her cell on Saturday, reported The Associated Press.

While the trend of jailing impoverished people is chilling enough, what’s also concerning is that being locked up for truancy fines is more common than most Americans realize. In Berks County alone, over 1,600 parents and guardians have been locked up since 2000 due to nonpayment of truancy fines, and two-thirds of those incarcerated are women.

Like DiNino, the majority come from low income backgrounds and have no Bueller-style cash, savings, or credit card to offer up as payment.

It’s easy to say that the solution is for the parents to ensure their child goes to school—don’t do the crime, don’t do the time. But if a child’s not showing up, or is chronically late to school, chances are that something in the family’s circumstance is keeping that from happening.

Maybe it’s a lack of transportation. Maybe it’s that the parent works nontraditional hours and isn’t home in the morning to get the kids ready. In DiNino’s case, due to her poverty, the overwhelmed single mom avoided homelessness by staying at a relative’s house.  (READ MORE)