Seriously, now. If I’m going to prison, I have a fridge full of food, an apartment full of furniture, and a cat. Do I just make all these arrangements through my lawyer? Does the government own my stuff now? Will my landlord have to deal with all of my belongings as though I’d abandoned them?
What if I’m going to prison for a really long time? I need to sell my house! Who sells my house? Do I still get the money?
Just so we’re clear, I’m not hunting for legal advice, as I’m not actually going to prison. I’m just curious.
One thing that matters - have you used any of that stuff in order to commit a crime? I don’t know the fine points of the law, but I know that if say, you were dealing drugs out of your apartment/house or car (especially your car) the government may have a claim on them.
All right, all right. Let’s say that I committed my crime on vacation, on the other side of the country, using nothing that can be traced back to my house. My house (and the contents) is innocent. My cat is innocent. My fruit bars and tomato sauce are innocent.
The government just hauls you off to prison, and doesn’t care about the stuff left behind.
It’s up to you to find family or friends willing to empty out your fridge, find someone to keep the cat, move your stuff out of the apartment and make arrangements with the landlord to get out of the lease, get your mail forwarded, pay any bills that come in the mail, sell your car or put it in storage, shut off your cell phone service, shut off your internet ISP, arrange for a partial refund on your SMDB annual fee, etc.
If you don’t move your stuff out of the apartment (and don’t keep paying rent), then the landlord can consider it abandoned and dispose of it.
If you have a house to sell, your friends/family/lawyer can arrange with a real estate agent to sell it, and when it sells they can visit you in prison with the papers for you to sign. (Note that in many states, the victims of your crime might be able to file a claim to get reimbursed from the money you get from selling the house.)
You have your friends or family go clean out your stuff, break your lease, and adopt your cat. I’d also have them move any money into an interest-bearing account. Afterall, you’ll only get a bus ticket and a new suit upon your release.
As others have posted, it’s often up to friends and relatives to deal with your stuff. According to Behind Bars: Surviving Prison, it’s much like the process at death, and in fact often friends/relatives handle things (and you!) in the same way, especially if you’re going away for a long time. You might find all your stuff sold/given away when you return 10 or 20 years later.
Don’t most felony charges also carry some type of monetary penalty as well? I hear on the news all the time that so and such has been sentenced to x amount of years and also ordered to pay some sort of fines. I’d guess that if you were a little strapped for the fine that they would maybe sell off your stuff to recoup the money you owe.
If you were fined as part of your sentence and couldn’t otherwise afford to pay it, I’m sure the government would seize the proceeds from your house. Aside from that though, you’d get the money. I suppose either you have your lawyer set up some kind of account with it, or it would just go into your prison “bank account”. Presumably in the latter case you’d have some serious gate money upon release, in addition to the bus ticket and suit.
And it’s just so much fun to redress in the barf-stained clothing that you were wearing when they got you for DUI. Not to mention the blood stains from when you whacked your head on the wheel and slumped over it. Even so - that’s gotta be the BEST changing of clothes you’ll ever experience!
And I didn’t get no bus pass from Santa Rita. I didn’t even get my smokes back. Imagine exiting the jail and trying to bum a smoke (and a light for god’s sake) in that condition. God bless the woman who helped me that day. I must’ve been a huge fright, I had a huge black eye and various body and facial bruises. She was a saint.
It’s a bit of a hijack, but suppose you aren’t in prison at all? Suppose you live alone, you own your house, and one day without warning you collapse in the street and are in a coma for several months. On awakening, you get yourself discharged from the hospital and go home, to find that your house has been broken into, all your possessions are wrecked or stolen, there are squatters in residence…
And your bank account has been emptied (they got your bank details from the statements that continued to come in the post), and any standing orders etc. haven’t been paid since, and there are creditors demanding payment and initiating legal action…
Remember, you collapsed without warning, so you weren’t able to warn your friends or relatives beforehand. Does nobody have any responsibility to at least try to stop your life going to hell in a handbasket while you’re unconscious?
Many people get arrested while they are in bed! Cops love to serve warrents when they know you are half naked and groggy. Then they make you beg for shoes and a shirt, if you’re lucky. I saw a guy walking downtown with nothing but a pair of gym shorts when he got out of the county lockup. In prision I beleive that they give you some short of clothing because after eating thier food for a couple of years its very unlikely that most people would be able to wear the stuff they came in with. A lot of them came to prision straight from county lockup anyway, so the didn’t have cloths.
Generally, you have a long time from Arrest to actual sentencing and sometimes they give you some time after sentencing “to get your affairs in order”. Some of that time before Conviction you might well be out on bail, giving you time to arrange things for a possible bad ending.
Alive At Both Ends: hopefully you have relatives or friends. If not, in some juristictions the County Coroner steps in. Yes, I know you’re not dead, but that Office helps alive dudes too.
