The Real Cost of Prisons Weblog

Several other states and some cities have gone to great lengths to squeeze money from inmates.

In Arizona’s Maricopa County, which includes Phoenix, Sheriff Joe Arpaio calls himself America’s toughest sheriff. Earlier this year, he said inmates would be charged $1.25 per day for meals. His decision followed months of food strikes staged by convicts who complained of being fed green bologna and moldy bread.

In Iowa’s Des Moines County, where officials faced a $1.7 million budget hole this year, politicians considered charging prisoners for toilet paper, at a savings of $2,300 per year. The idea was ultimately dropped.

A New Jersey legislator introduced a bill similar to New York’s, this one based on fees charged by the Camden County Correctional Facility, which bills prisoners $5 a day for room and board and $10 per day for infirmary stays, totaling an estimated $300,000 per year.

In Virginia, Richmond’s overcrowded city jail has begun charging $1 per day, hoping to earn as much as $200,000 a year. In Missouri’s Taney County, home to Branson, the sheriff says charging inmates $45 a day will help pay for a new jail.

Prisons and jails took some of the biggest cuts this summer when legislators took machetes to their state budgets, trying to slash their way out of an economic morass exacerbated by dwindling tax revenues. But to civil rights advocates and some law enforcement officials, trying to raise money by charging inmates makes no sense.

“The overwhelming number of people who end up in prison are poor,’’ said Elizabeth Alexander, director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s National Prison Project. Alexander also says such efforts only amount to political window dressing.

Collecting the fees covers a wide spectrum. In Richmond, they are deducted from a prisoner’s personal account, which contains whatever money relatives send and any cash the suspect had when arrested. In Arizona, Arpaio, who makes inmates wear pink underwear to increase the humiliation factor, also taps prisoner accounts. Inmates who have no money still receive food, the sheriff says.

Other authorities slap the prisoner with a bill upon release from prison. But it is often hard to collect. In Kansas, Overland Park officials acknowledged collecting only 39 percent of fees. In Jackson County, Mo., officials discovered they spent more money trying to collect fees than they received from inmates.

In some cases, it is prisoners’ families who shoulder the financial burden.

“It’s the spouses, children, and parents who pay the fees; they are the people who contribute to prisoners’ canteen accounts,’’ said Sarah Geraghty of the Southern Center for Human Rights, which successfully opposed an effort earlier this year in Georgia to bill prisoners.

The money was to be collected by seizing cash in their jail accounts or by filing lawsuits. The proposal also would have denied parole to those who could not make payments after being freed.
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2009/08/16/some_states_charging_inmates_for_stay/