In California, a Plan to Charge Inmates for Their Stay

[Judi Lynn]

In California, a Plan to Charge Inmates for Their Stay
By JENNIFER MEDINA
Published: December 11, 2011

RIVERSIDE, Calif. — A one-night stay in this city’s finest hotel costs $190, complete with sumptuous sheets and a gourmet restaurant. Soon, a twin metal bunk at the county jail, with meals served on plastic trays, will run $142.42.

With already crowded jails filling quickly and an $80 million shortfall in the budget, Riverside County officials are increasingly desperate to find every source of revenue they can. So last month, the County Board of Supervisors voted unanimously to approve a plan to charge inmates for their stay, reimbursing the county for food, clothing and health care.

Prisoners with no assets will not have to pay, but the county has the ability to garnish wages and place liens on homes under the ordinance, which goes into effect this week.

As the county supervisor who pressed for the ordinance, Jeff Stone, likes to put it: “You do the crime, you will serve the time, and now you will also pay the dime.”

More:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/12/us/in-riverside-california-a-plan-to-charge-inmates.html?ref=us

[Speck Tater]

1. So when prisons become a profit center for local government

they will have increased incentive to throw more and more people into jail. Why not just imprison the whole population and put us to work as slave labor for the corporations? That's where we're heading.

[ixion]

11. we're not headed there... we ARE there.

In my opinion.

[FarPoint]

13. Well...they should pay for their medical services..

Just like everyone else in America. Thats my feel on this issue...I don't see the fee going as far as you do in total....surely not an incentive to secure more inmates.... I just can't see that.

[nadine_mn]

2. I have mixed feelings about this

Mainly because this would unfairly affect minorities and the poor. On the other hand, I would really like to see white collar criminals pay for their crimes more than just restitution.

We have seen in the past how the for profit detention center is ripe for corruption. I cannot remember where, but there was a judge who was getting a kickback from the private juvenile detention center for sending kids there - I think a young man ended up committing suicide.

[tomg]

4. It happened in Pennsylvania.

There were two judges involved, and between them they sentenced a couple of hundred kids to detention centers for things that in many cases would have involved a couple of days of community service. I believe it was in Alleghany county.

[no_hypocrisy]

12. It was Luzerne County. The judges took money from

for-profit prisons to send juveniles to them. One boy committed suicide as a result. Both judges were prosecuted and convicted.

[tomg]

19. Thanks for the info. I thought

it was Allegheny. I didn't realize that they had been convicted ( knew they were going to be prosecuted). That is great. The whole private prison system makes me ill ( I taught in a state prison for a college program a few times).

[tomg]

3. This is completely insane on so many levels.

Let's just take one: one more means of controlling dissent. Think of this as controlling OWS and other movements involving Civil Disobedience.

I have to be misreading or misinterpreting this.

[AllyCat]

17. You aren't. That's exactly what this is. "We're broke so we can't afford your civil rights"

I wonder if the rich will have to pay for the few country club prisons they actually have to go to.

[coalition_unwilling]

5. I cannot believe this baloney will pass constitutional muster if and when

properly challenged.

Start with the 'equal protection' clause and go to the 'takings' provisions.

Two paragraphs near the end of the story bear reading, imo:

Sharon Dolovich, a law professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, said the county faced a “tremendous blood-from-a-stone problem” and called the plan an “illogical, ill-thought-through response” to the state transfer of prisoners.

“If our goal as a society is to rehabilitate people who have been in jail, then burdening them with another thing to pay when they are released is not the way to do it,” Professor Dolovich said. “It could also create an incentive to deny bail just so that the county could be bringing in more money.”

[rhett o rick]

6. This is already happening in Washington the state. When you get parolled you usually own thousands a

and must make payments or go back to prison. Hard to find a job? No excuse.

[Newest Reality]

7. When we get to the point

where we all realize we are all inmates in this stay, then it might make sense as to why this is relevant.

We will all have to pay more and more to be here, where we are. That's what the nature of our God, Profit demands of us, no matter what we believe and think in our own little version of this neo-liberal world we now inhabit.

Don't worry too much because you have to get used to idea of a world where your idea of existence is about how much you will have to pay into it. The cost will become increasingly more unbearable because the cost of profit is destined to become more and more the purpose designed into your life by media as the corporate message of meaning and life itself.

Oh, you thought the new car or that great makeup was the ultimate goal and meaning? No way. We are just getting started in the ever accepted, premeditated, manipulated way of life that corporations want and demand. In a while, what you called and thought of as government will most certainly give way to a newer version of corporatism that will not only replace what we now know, but it will create, without doubt, what will be. The signs are already there and our children will be nothing but consumers devoted, religiously, to brand names and a world of promotion for the sake of profit, forever more.

Nothing much yet, among you, is being done to stop the trading of convenience and gadgetry for life as it was known. The slow and gradual acceptance of this onslaught of so called progress is enough to make old thinkers see the end of life as knowers versus those who know much more and use it as a social and economic tool to control and manipulate and, eventually commit genocide against the masses of us who are here, now, and living our lives as we conceive them to be.

Are we all alright with the dutiful progress of the technological overlords and economic masters who are orchestrating this next phase of our humanity?

[ellisonz]

8. This won't really work...

[starroute]

9. No, but it will hurt a lot of people before they figure that out

And typically those that can least afford to handle it.

[ellisonz]

10. The only way I see it working is if...

...they make a really high means-test level - but even then it will probably cost more to collect than what they collect at the end.

Typical bureaucratic right-wing stupidity.

[Luciferous]

14. This is one of the dumbest things I've ever read. Placing liens on their homes, really?!

So if they have kids living in that home and they can't pay, I guess those kids will just have to go live on the street so the county can get their money, right?

Maybe instead of charging inmates for their stay they should focus on rehabilitation and probation for non-violent offenders, which is a hell of a lot cheaper and more effective than locking them up.

[Auggie]

15. This is extra incentive for privately run prisons

to keep a full "guest registery" -- a very bad idea.

[AllyCat]

16. So knowing it will cost money to go to jail will prevent crime?

That's what the line "With already crowded jails filling quickly..." is saying. So while the prisoner is unable to work to pay the bills, the family left behind loses their home? Nice thinking California. Lets punish anyone this person has ever come into contact with too...

[Peace Patriot]

18. What has happened to the accused's right to trial and appropriate sentencing?

Can a City Council or County Board of Supervisors add penalties to a person's sentence after judicial proceedings have ended, with the accused not only having no right to representation but not even being there, not even knowing that they are being stripped of their property and becoming, in effect, indentured slaves of the city or county?

This is insane. And this is the sort of abuse of power that leads to bloody revolutions.

I can't say it surprises me, from Riverside County--one of the most notoriously bad election systems in a country of the worst election systems ever devised (ES&S/Diebold 80% monopoly, all over the U.S., with voting machines run on their 'TRADE SECRET' code with virtually no audit/recount controls). Riverside County officials have been among the worst in adopting the corporate cultural of secrecy around vote counting. Now this--robbing helpless prisoners!--something out of the Middle Ages! Will flogging be next? Cutting off hands of thieves? Jailing of entire families in the "Poor House"?

Someone upthread says the state of Washington does this. I am appalled. But then, we are in the age of Diebold, when leaders even in progressive states like Wisconsin and Washington behave like fascist assholes or feel obliged to cater to fascist assholes.

[coalition_unwilling]

22. Manifestly violates the 'due process' and 'takings' clauses of the

Constitution, in my opinion.

So I agree with you 100%.

[backtoblue]

20. That's some bullshit!

They're time in jail is their punishment! Talk about keeping the prisoners in prison...

[Hotler]

21. Fuckers! n/t

[Trillo]

23. Reminds me of Deukmejian's Three Strikes and You're Out....

Not quite as short, though. Sure would be nice if these kinds of catchy, politician slogans also applied to corporate.

[barbtries]

24. run 'em into the poor house.

gawd that's bullshit. sigh.

[24601]

25. Pay up or get the f@$# out!

{smiley face}

[Shoe Horn]

26. And if you fail to pay your 'debt'? ---> Debtor's Prison for you!

[img][/img]


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shays%27_Rebellion

[KamaAina]

27. Call it "Motel 6 to 12"

[CaliforniaHiker]

28. How many people turn to crime due to poverty?

The majority of people don't start committing crimes for the heck of it. They are doing it because it is bringing in some sort of money. Others are gang members, most of whom joined gangs as poor teenagers as a way to find a connection in a world where they were already behind. All this is going to do is to keep the criminals poor, without much of a way out, while further harming their families.

We are talking about over $4,000 a month they will owe, how many people in prison would never had ended up there if they had $4000 a month to spend?