More On Modern Day Debtors' Prison

From a post by Professor Eboni Nelson, University of South Carolina School of Law, appearing in Public Citizen's Consumer Law & Policy Blog:

• In our country, we generally don’t put people in jail for failing to pay private debt, right? Wrong, according to recent articles published in the ABA Journal and the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
  
  The articles discuss some Missouri creditors’ practices of petitioning the court to obtain “body attachments,” whereby a debtor can be arrested and held until he/she posts bond or has a court hearing. While it is unclear how widespread the practice is, the fact that it is being used by some creditors, including payday lenders, to incarcerate consumers is troubling.

Source: Modern-Day Debtors' Prisons.