captioning sponsored by wnet >> sreenivasan: on this edition for sunday, december, 28: a commercial airliner carrying 162 people vanishes in southeast asia. we'll have the latest on the search. >> we don't know what happened yet. >> sreenivasan: the christmas shopping season draws to a close. how did retailers across the nation do? and in our signature segment: people being sent to jail because they can't pay fines. many experts believe it's unconstitutional. >> being threatened with a jail sentence, did that help you to come up with the money? >> it helped me to try a little harder, but as the old saying goes, you know you can't squeeze blood from a turnip. >> sreenivasan: next on pbs newshour weekend.

>> pbs newshour weekend is made possible by: corporate funding is provided by mutual of america-- designing customized individual and group retirement products. that's why we are your retirement company. additional support is provided by: and by the corporation for public broadcasting and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. from the tisch wnet studios in lincoln center in new york hari sreenivasan. >> sreenivasan: good evening. thanks for joining us. it's monday morning in asia and the search for a missing airasia jetliner carrying 162 people is resuming. the airbus disappeared from radar screens about 40 minutes after taking off from indonesia on route to singapore. the newshour's zachary green has more on the investigation.

>> reporter: at singapore's changi airport, friends and relatives gathered to await news about airasia flight 8501, which disappeared early this morning. among those waiting, the fiance of a young man who had been traveling with relatives. >> ( translated ): it was supposed to be their last vacation, before us--we got married. it was to be his last vacation with his family. >> reporter: the flight took off at 5:35 a.m. local time from surabaya, indonesia's second- largest city. the scheduled flight time to singapore was one hour and 55 minutes. but at 6:13 am, 38 minutes after takeoff, the pilot radioed air traffic control, asking to change course and increase altitude to avoid storm clouds. there were reports of lightning in the area. the flight was last seen on radar three minutes later at 6:16 am, near belitung island in the java sea. a minute later, it was gone. according to an indonesian transportation official, no distress signal had been sent out.

search and rescue teams from indonesia, singapore, and malaysia spent several hours sunday searching for any sign of the plane, an airbus a320. but as night fell, officials halted the search until morning. the united states, the united kingdom, australia, south korea, and india have all volunteered search and rescue teams. >> ( translated ): i heard many rumors from people and i said the rumors are not true that the plane has been found and wreckage has been found-- this is not true. >> reporter: tony fernandes, chief executive of airasia, a budget carrier based in malaysia, also cautioned against speculation. >> we do not know what's happened yet, so we'll wait for the accident investigation to really find out what's happened. our concern right now is for the relatives and for the next of kin, there is nothing more important to us for our crew's family, and for our passengers' families, that we look after them. >> reporter: airasia has had a clean safety record since the company began operating in malaysia 13 years ago.

the plane that went missing had undergone maintenance just a month before. last march malaysia airlines flight 370 disappeared with 239 people aboard, on route from kuala lumpur to beijing. it's never been found. in july, malaysia airlines flight 17 was shot down over eastern ukraine, killing all 298 people on board. >> sreenivasan: a ferry carrying nearly 500 passengers and crew is on fire in the adriatic sea and a rescue mission is underway. italian and greek helicopter crews are airlifting passengers off the vessel, despite heavy rain and strong winds in the area. a greek government official said one man was confirmed dead. the international combat mission in afghanistan formally ended today, more than 13 years after it began in the aftermath of 9/11. sunday's ceremony puts afghan forces officially in charge of the ongoing battle against the taliban. even so, nearly 11,000 american military personnel will remain

to assist the afghan army and police. more than 2,000 americans have died in the conflict. islamic state fighters reportedly have killed nearly 12 hundred syrian civilians during the past six months. this according to the syrian observatory for human rights. the group says isis also has killed 120 of its own members, most of them foreign fighters who were seeking to return home. u.s.-led airstrikes continued against isis targets in syria and iraq today. in a television interview today, the u.s. ebola response coordinator offered an update about the fight against the disease. >> i think you have to separate where we here at home from west africa. here at home we have made significant strides to prepare for the occasional case of ebola that we'll see from time to time on our shores. and in west africa there's a lot of progress in liberia and they've gone from 50-to-100 new cases a day to down to five-to- ten new cases a day, but there's still a lot of work to be done in sierra leone and troubling signs in guinea. so i think we're nearing a pivot point in this where the number

of new cases over in west africa have stabilized but this won't be done until we get all the way to zero. it's like a forest fire, a few embers burning and the thing can reignite any time. >> sreenivasan: and doctors in houston say former president george h.w. bush's condition is improving. he was taken by ambulance to the hospital tuesday after complaining of shortness of breath. the former president is 90- years-old. >> sreenivasan: and now to our signature segment, our original in-depth reports about significant but often under- reported stories. tonight, we take you to alabama where civil rights advocates say hundreds of people have been jailed because they couldn't afford to pay their fines. critics say the practice is tantamount to the restoration of debtors' prisons, which were

outlawed in the 1830's. newshour special correspondent john carlos fray has an updated version of our report, which first aired in april. ♪ >> reporter: timothy fugatt, the minister of music at this church near childersburg, alabama, says that it's his deep faith in god that got him through some tough times. his son cole, was born with a rare brain disease. >> the spheres in his brain didn't divide properly. so pretty much when you look through a c.t. scan, it was nothing but fluid. >> reporter: but life got even tougher after a seemingly minor incident in december of 2010 when he was pulled over by police and ticketed for an expired license plate tag. >> i was coming from the hospital where had been staying with cole there in the hospital. and as i come into town, they had a traffic checkpoint. timothy's wife, kristy, had also gotten tickets for two traffic infractions and both were ordered to appear in the childersburg municipal court.

the fugatts told the judge about their hospitalized son and were both found "not guilty", as these court documents show. but the judge ruled that the two still had to pay court costs of about $500. during this period, timothy fugatt says he was spending so much time at the hospital with his son that he couldn't hold down a job, and with his wife also not working, they couldn't afford to pay the court costs. so their case was turned over to judicial corrections services, a private company that collects fines for the city. fugatt says that judicial corrections services, known as j.c.s., told him that he and his wife could be jailed if they didn't pay what they owed. >> they would just plain out say, you know, "if you can't pay then they'll issue you a warrant for your arrest." >> reporter: did that scare you? >> of course. >> reporter: fugatt says he did the best he could to pay off his family's fines, but says when he couldn't continue to pay and he and his wife missed at least one court date, they were arrested and jailed. >> i felt completely like a

criminal. i mean i didn't sell drugs. i didn't break into anyone's home. i didn't kill anybody. i had an expired tag. >> reporter: so you and your wife were found not guilty of the traffic violations, but still you were being arrested. >> we were being arrested, yes. i was very upset, very angry. >> reporter: they were released several hours later when a relative paid a portion of what they owed. that incident contributed to the fugatt's decision to become part of a lawsuit against judicial corrections services and the town of childersburg. the suit alleges that incarcerating people who can't pay their fines violates the constitution. though some experts argue that jail time is legal for those who don't make a good faith effort to pay their fines, in 1971 the supreme court ruled that the constitution prohibits imposing "a jail term solely because the defendant is indigent and cannot forthwith pay the fine in full." >> that's exactly what's happening here. >> reporter: david dinelli is the deputy legal directory of the southern poverty law center, a non-profit civil rights organization that is not involved in the fugatt's lawsuit but has represented others in similar situations.

dinelli estimates a 1,000 people every month are going to jail in alabama because they cannot afford to pay a fine. >> everyone thinks that debtor's prison is over. it's behind us. it isn't. as a matter of practice, and in some cases, policy, the courts ask one question, "can you pay the fine?" if you can't then you have to what's called, "sit it out in jail." that is unconstitutional unless the court first conducts an inquiry into whether they're indigent and the causes for their inability to pay the fine. routinely what's happening here is that no such inquiry is undertaken. >> did anyone in the court every try and assess whether or not you could afford the pay the fees? >> no, sir. it was just pass and go. it was really fast. it was really fast. >> reporter: collecting fines is more important than ever because many cities face budget shortfalls. but these same cities don't have the personnel to collect the fines. so increasingly they turn to what are known as private probation companies. that's where judicial corrections services comes in. >> we were approached by the

probation service. they found a niche. >> reporter: childersburg officials declined to speak with us, so we met with steven boone, the finance director for mountain brook, a city neighboring childersburg that also hired judicial correction services. its court is one of over a 1,000, in at least 12 states across the country, that's hired a private probation company according to human rights watch. judicial correction services collects fines at no cost to the cities it works for. >> they're helping us to become more efficient, and they're helping us to ensure that we don't get a backlog of delinquent accounts that may ultimately get so old and people move away that we'll never collect it. so it's-- i think it's a win/win. >> i think private probation has a role. >> reporter: republican state senator cam ward is the chairman of the judiciary committee and has been following the growing trend of private probation. not only does ward support the use of such companies, he believes the industry will continue to grow. >> now, i will tell you this i think the trend to privatization in the area of collections, i 9think that will continue all

across the country until you see a concentrated effort to put more money into the collection services that the state runs. >> reporter: but these private debt collectors are by definition in business to make money. and even though they don't charge the city anything, they charge offenders, like timothy fugatt $45 a month plus a $10 start-up fee, until a debt is fully paid off. this on top of the $500 in court costs that fugatt already owed. can you tell me if you were making an effort to pay these off? >> we were. yes, sir. even though, you know, i was making the effort, i wasn't getting very far with it. it was-- it was till all these fees adding up. so i wasn't gaining much ground. >> reporter: still, four months after their initial court date documents show that the fugatt's scraped together enough to pay off almost $300 of the $500 they owed in court costs. ♪ but then things went from bad to worse. in june of 2011, their son, cole, died. a month later their house that had been in the family for

generations was foreclosed upon. at this point the fugatts say they were consumed with grief and were missing their appointments with j.c.s. timothy says he explained the difficult circumstances his family was under, but he says the j.c.s. probation officer wouldn't work with him at all. >> it was all at one time, just hit us all at once. and i explained it all to them. but we-- you know, it was either pay or go to jail. >> being threatened with a jail sentence, did that help you to come up with the money? >> it helped to try a little harder, but, you know, still. i mean, as the old saying goes, you know, you can't squeeze blood from a turnip. >> reporter: over the next eight months with j.c.s. monthly fees adding up, the couple missed at least one court date each and were fined additional fees for failure to appear. then a warrant for their arrest was issued. by the time of their arrest in february of 2012 the fugatt's had racked up $2,500 in additional court fines. remember all this began with three traffic violations for which they were found not guilty.

>> reporter: if you would've come up with the money that you owed judicial correction services and you would've shown up for all of your appointments with them and to the courts none of this would have ever happened? >> you're right. it wouldn't have happened, but, you know, the situation i was in, i was doing what i could do you know? i had a dying child, no steady job at that point because we were back and forth to the hospital, i was doing what i could do. >> reporter: david dinelli of the southern poverty law center says that people like the fugatts end up paying j.c.s. off for years because of all the additional fees and added fines that they often accrue. >> they're in a system in which all they are doing is paying j.c.s., judicial collection services on a monthly basis for the privilege of staying out of jail. >> reporter: we asked legal scholar and columbia law professor gillian metzger to take a look at the lawsuit and to evaluate the constitutionality of private companies, like judicial correction services, collecting fines for cities like

childersburg. she has no involvement in the case. >> part of what due process requires is that you have an impartial decision maker. and if the company that is imposing the fees and continuing your supervision has a financial interest in your staying under supervision, then that really calls their impartiality into question. and they have a financial motive. >> reporter: metzger also says the court is obligated to provide alternative options for an individual to pay off a debt to society, such as community service, if he or she is indigent. >> if you're not paying because you're just too poor to pay, then the court can't automatically imprison you. they have to do an investigation about alternative arrangements in order to allow you to work off the fine in some other way. >> reporter: we reached out to j.c.s. multiple times for an interview but we never received a reply. but on its website j.c.s. says the lawsuit is baseless. we also tried unsuccessfully several times to ask the mayor of childersburg, "b.j." meeks,

if he was satisfied with the services j.c.s. has been providing the city, but city hall never responded to our request. so we went to a city council meeting to ask. after speaking to some of the residents here, they feel like they've been threatened with a jail sentence if they don't pay their fines and i wonder if you had a comment. >> well, then that's up to the court system. is, you know... >> reporter: i mean, is it not unconstitutional to jail somebody who cannot pay their fee? >> i don't know. again, if the court system is satisfied with it under state supreme court jurisdiction, i know that we contract, we are one of the many, many cities in alabama that uses contract service, and the reason being because of not having enough personnel, we have. >> reporter: even state senator cam ward, who supports the private probation industry, has concerns. >> what's currently in existence is almost like the wild west. there is no regulation. if you're gonna create a system that, quote/unquote, is a "debtors prison," all you're doing is inviting yourself to a

federal lawsuit, is what you're doing. >> reporter: as for the fugatts after being charged an initial court cost of about $500 for traffic violations of which they were found not guilty. court documents provided by the fugatt's lawyers show that they've paid almost $1,300 to the childersburg court. it's a number that doesn't even include all the additional monthly fees they paid to judicial correction services. a figure the city of childersburg declined to provide us due to pending litigation. >> reporter: timothy fugatt says that his family still owes more money to judicial corrections services. how much? he's not sure. he says j.c.s. stopped contacting him after the lawsuit was filed. while the fugatt's case is still pending, since our story aired last spring the childersburg municipal court recently issued a standing order stating that "in no case shall an indigent defendant be incarcerated based solely on his or her inability to pay fines." fugatt's attorney also told newshour that hundreds of

childersburg residents no longer have warrants out for their arrest and have been taken off judicial corrections services roster. in a statement to newshour the city of childersburg says it is "pleased with the actions taken to transform the court, which was the subject of some negative press attention, into a model for other courts to follow. and childersburg is not alone. the city of montgomery, that also hired judicial correction services, has agreed to new policies to avoid jailing people who are too poor to pay minor fines. in november, a federal court approved a settlement for plaintiffs who were suing the city, alleging they were unlawfully jailed. the settlement requires montgomery to stop contracting with judicial correction services. >> sreenivasan: should people with outstanding court fines end up behind bars? join the debate on our facebook page. visit facebook.com/newshour. >> sreenivasan: ever since oil prices started plunging, we've

heard experts predict that consumers would use the money they're saving on gas to spend more on christmas gifts. did it turn out that way? for more about the christmas shopping season, we are joined now via skype from albany, new york by sara germano of "the wall street journal." so considering we have a couple of days left in the calendar year but really the retail season starts around thanksgiving how did we do so far? >> so far, so good. we are really starting to see the results into january and once the government reports its spending data and some of the largest retailers report their quarterly earnings-- earnings. but early indications show that so far christmas shoppers holiday shoppers were coming out in for its this season and spending a little bit more than they have in season's past. >> so how much of this is related to kind of an increased consumer confidence combined with that decrease in gas prices that we talked about? >> yeah. everyone loves to talk about the gas prices.

they've been down. they're now down below $2 in some states. and that's putting about $450 million a day into american's pockets. you know consumers we've spoken with have said that having that extra bit to spend is going a long way. although some consumers are also saying they're being a little bit more careful with that extra money. and some of it is going to savings. so we're really starting to try to look for how much of that extra cash earned by falling gas prices is going to be put back into the economy or saved for some other day. >> srennivasan: what about that kind of standard question we ask, are the on-line retailers taking bigger and bigger chunks out of the brick and mortar players or is it a kind of healthy balance now? >> well, the biggest issue in retail right now is actually figuring out you know who is going to win on-line sales growth.

and it a game the brick and mortar retailers especially the big box stores like wal-mart and target are trying to compete more effectively with the web-based retailers like amazon and ebay. the last few years you have seen definite strides in that direction from the brick and mortar retailers. just this year wal-mart said that it would do on-line price matching to better compete in that area. the next piece now that christmas is over the next phase this competition will see is the returns. like all those ugly christmas sweaters that you didn't like or didn't fit those on-line sales are going to be shipped back. and a lot of the shipping companies like fedex and ups and maybe even the u.s. postal service are bracing themselves for what they expect to be a pretty heavy return system, particularly for yen line sales. >> and what about the shift that we're seeing in retailers heading towards mobile. even small businesses are putting out apps now.

is it making a big difference. are people buying or shopping on their cell phones? >> yeah, and that's something that is part of that you know, shift to on-line sales that even the brick and mortar retailers are trying to get better at. a lot of effort has gone into building better mobile apps for shopping. you're seeing a lot of web rooming and showrooming, buzzwords we have been hearing over the past few months and years people trying to be savior shoppers knowing the prices of whatever it is they want to buy knowing where they can get it on-line and in stores. and also seeing a bit of a decrease in impulse spending too. consumers are, because of all these efforts and the retailers trying to get better at offering the best price, the best education the best apps customers are going to be smarter. not lakely to buy off the top because they are so much more information. >> sara germano of "the wall street journal," thanks so

much. >> thank you >> sreenivasan: church attendance naturally soars around christmas time, but that's not the case in england during the rest of the year. in fact, many anglican churches have closed in recent years as congregations have withered. now, an effort is underway to preserve some of these historic buildings by using them in some very unconventional ways. nulufar hedayat reports from bristol england. >> it's sunday morning and that could only mean one thing it's time for the circus. ♪ take me to church ♪ ♪. >> st. paul's church was struggling for years with dwindling congregations. so much so that it fell out of use completely. >> the church of england wanted to get st. paul's back into use and restore it as a hub for the community. but this would mean that it could no longer just be a christian place of worship. it would have to diversify.

cue-- media, a performers group that call this church their home. >> the church's conservation trust are now responsible for st. paul's. the church of england has 350 sites into their care. churches that would otherwise become apartments or demolished. the deal is that all buildings remain consecrated and therefore can readily be turned back into a place of worship. >> what wouldn't you have in the church. >> oh there are plenty of things we wouldn't have. but church corporation trust thinks that this is an appropriate use for the church. all we've done is adapt and convert this church into a new use. and there will always be people who will be unhappy about that. >> my grandparents are vicars so i think they may have some issues with it. i think they would feel it's not quite right because the building has great religious importance for them. >> some may view what the church of england is doing as improper. but others are saying it is a practical way of at least halting the demise of

historical and religiously important buildings. >> srennivasan: some more news before we leave you tonight. five people died and 11 more were injured after an early morning three-alarm fire at a senior living apartment complex near san antonio texas. a new cnn poll says jeb bush and chris chris-year are running one, two among prospective presidential candidates. bush leads by ten points. hillary clinton has a whopping 57 point advantage over her closest potential challenger massachusetts senator elizabeth warren. that's all for tonight. i'm hari sreenivasan have a good night. captioning sponsored by wnet captioned by media access group at wgbh access.wgbh.org

>> pbs newshour weekend is made possible by: corporate funding is provided by mutual of america-- designing customized individual and group retirement products. that's why we are your retirement company. additional support is provided by: and by the corporation for public broadcasting and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you.

♪ >> beethoven always exists in the unexpected. he is trying to break away from the impending doom of his deafness. adre joliver seems to understand the guitar and have he can interact with another guitar. ♪