The Real Cost of Prisons Weblog

State wants former inmate to pay cost of incarceration
"I’d heard about that, but I didn’t think they’d do it to anyone who didn’t win the lottery," White said ruefully during an interview at her mother’s home in Bethany. "How dare (they) charge me to be treated like a dog?"

White, 36, served time on charges of possession of narcotics and violation of probation.

White and her attorney, Jack Keyes of New Haven, maintain White drew attention to herself by filing a civil lawsuit against a former friend’s landlord. The lawsuit alleges the landlord’s oven blew up in White’s face, causing her serious injury.

Keyes believes he has a good chance of winning a substantial sum for White. Unfortunately for his client, the Department of Correction is entitled to half of any money White wins from that lawsuit, and White said the state medical insurance program is after the other half.

White said she doesn’t mind paying for the cost of her medical care over the years in prison. But paying the Department of Correction for her incarceration is another story.

Keyes says the department is making the claim under a rarely enforced law that allows the state to recoup the cost of incarceration if an inmate wins the lottery, inherits a substantial amount of money or wins a legal claim.

"I think, before this case, I had seen (the law) applied once in my life and heard of it maybe 10 times," Keyes said. He added that it’s usually the assets of welfare recipients, not former prisoners, which the state is after.

But Brian Garnett, a spokesman for the Department of Correction, indicated the practice is a lot more common than that. The department recovered more than $1.3 million from former inmates in 2004, he said.

Laws on such collection from inmates vary from state to state, and can include trying to recoup medical costs, room and board, and clothing, according to information provided by the National Conference of State Legislatures.

According to the itemized bill White received from Connecticut, she owes $25,970 for an 8½-month incarceration in 1999, $17,778 for two stints behind bars totaling about six months in 2002, and $23,424 for an eight-month sentence that ended in June 2004.

During that time, White maintains she was incarcerated in barely livable conditions at the York Correctional Institution in East Lyme, working for pennies an hour, and said she was forced to buy necessities such as shampoo and toothpaste at vastly inflated prices at the prison store. When inmates spend their days compiling records for state databases, White says, they’re paid 30 cents an hour — a significant savings for the state. Yet the state expects her to pay back the full cost of every day she was incarcerated.

Garnett confirmed that inmates working at Datacon, York’s data entry training program, make an average of 35 to 40 cents an hour, and inmates doing non-vocational work make between $0.75 and $1.75 per day. He also confirmed that they’re required to buy soap, shampoo and other necessities at the prison store, but he said prices are not inflated. He also said low inmate wages and recouping the cost of incarceration from inmates like White are unrelated issues.

"The Department of Correction, in cooperation with the Department of Administrative Services … does look for inmates who have the ability to pay the cost of their incarceration," Garnett said. "If we find out, for example, through mail review or through telephone monitoring that someone has significant assets, we pass that information on to the (DAS)."

He noted that both inmate wages and the department’s right to bill for the cost of incarceration are set by statute.

If the DAS isn’t successful in collecting, claims are sent to the attorney general. Attorney General Richard Blumenthal said his office has prosecuted about 20 collection cases against inmates in the past five years, for amounts ranging from $20,000 to $140,000.

"Only a small percentage of prisoners in Connecticut prisons … have sufficient assets to pay for incarceration, but when claims are referred to my office, we pursue them in court if necessary," Blumenthal said.

"My main interest is that the law be enforced uniformly and fairly, and we endeavor to do so whenever the Department of Correction asks us to collect money from an inmate."

He said the state tries to seize the money "without unduly burdening individuals who are trying to rehabilitate and recover and pursue productive lives." Blumenthal said he’s not familiar with White’s case because it hasn’t been referred to his office.

White said she is feeling unduly burdened. Now that she’s on the radar screen, she expects the Department of Correction will be after her mother’s house if she ever inherits it, along with any other large or small windfall that comes her way.

"Like anything else, once the file comes to the forefront, it’s in the forefront," Keyes said. "It’s better off being in the back row than in the front row."

A former nurse, White says she’s lost "my home, my car, my boyfriend and basically my life," since her narcotics addiction began after brain surgery in the early 1990s. Now, she says, the state is only making it more difficult for her to put her life back together.

She blames no one but herself for the problems that sent her to prison, but said that now, because she is a felon, she has not been able to find work.

"How am I ever going to get on my feet if they’re going to take over everything I get?" she asked.

Meggan Clark can be reached at 876-6800 or mclark@nhregister.com.