The criminalization of private debt happens when judges, at the request of collection agencies, issue arrest warrants for people who failed to appear in court to deal with unpaid civil debt judgments.  In many cases, the debtors were unaware they were sued or had not received notice to show up in court. 

There are tens of thousands of these warrants issued annually, but the total number is unknown, because states and local courts do not typically track these orders as a category of arrest warrants. In a review of court records, the ACLU examined more than 1,000 cases in which civil court judges issued arrest warrants for debtors, sometimes to collect amounts as small as $28.

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