Very weird that I am so old and have literally never heard this mentioned in a TV show or book or movie or anything.
In four out of five states, if you go to prison, you are literally paying for the time you spend there.
As you can guess, this results in crippling debt as soon as you're released.
The county gets back a fraction of what they hold over your head the rest of your life until you commit suicide(or die naturally and peacefully with the sword of damocles hanging over your head).
$20-$80 a day according to Rutgers.
Counties apparently sue people and employ wage garnishment to get back the money that majority of people obviously cannot pay back.
Isn't the US famous for their prison for profit, where prisons are privately owned and states need to pay if there are fewer incarcerated people inside?
That's the beauty of both ruling parties being 100% in support of the prison industrial complex. In fact, our current president even helped usher through the '94 Crime Bill, which keeps prisons nice and full for his golf buddies and institutional donors.
This is some serious "keep hitting yourself" material. It's not like you can decide to not be incarcerated. $7300-$29200 of debt per year spent in prison. Man, that is some vicious shit. Nobody will be able to convince me that this is not specifically designed to keep people down forever.
"Forty-three states allow inmates to get charged for "room and board" — the cost of their own imprisonment. Thirty-five states charge inmates for at least some medical expenses. Taken together, at least 49 states have a law on the books that authorizes at least one of the two. (Hawaii, as well as DC, doesn't have statutes that explicitly address pay-to-stay.)"
I just heard about that for the first time a few days ago, and I couldn't believe it was real. As horrible as I think the United States of Ferenginar is, they always manage to surprise me and be worse.
I have a friend who was in. Outrageously expensive! Paid 'rent', paid for various classes he was required to take, and paid for each mandatory random drig test. Plus, what they have to pay for phone calls is crazy!!
This is what conservatives wanted.
This is what Democrats wanted.
This is what capitalists wanted.
America is a fucking authoritarian shithole. It has no concept at all what freedom is, and never has. All of that "freedom" shit is a bald faced fucking lie.
And now some asshole raised in some Appalachian shithole is gonna stomp in here and try to tell everyone that America is great because he served in Afghanistan and if you hate America move
rationales justifying these fees routinely do not recognize them as a form of punishment and instead policymakers see pay-to-stay as financial reimbursement to the state by portraying incarcerated people as using up system resources. The justification allows pay-to-stay statutes to survive legal arguments alleging double punishment.
Might be somewhat acceptable if a job was available while in prison to support these living expenses. That at least might improve confidence and start the rehabilitation process.
Oh wait, who am I kidding. Prison has nothing to do with rehabilitation.
The very idea is absurd. It is so counter productive to the idea of rehabilitation. The prisons themselves say they aren't a significant revenue stream. Trying to offset the cost of a societal need by charging fees to prisons doesn't even make any sense. And the companies that are tasked with collecting this debt get 70% of what they collect which means that even the argument about offsetting the state's cost doesn't make sense.
It's profit seeking, counter productive cruelty and that's it. Just shameful.
In Utah, you get charged fees by the day if you've been charged and/or convicted of a misdemeanor. No charge if it's a felony. They figure they'll get their moneys worth if the inmate goes to work at Utah Corrections Industries.