Prisons charging prisoners for their incarceration?

Great Debates
1

I first heard about this on *60 Minutes * a week or two ago, and noticed it again at this link on Yahoo, about jails and prison systems charging prisoners (and in some cases, confiscating their funds and property, or going after their families) to pay for the cost of their incarceration.

I dunno about this. I mean, I’m kind of a bad person when it comes to prison; I think that time ought to be hard time, that access to weight rooms and martial arts dojos should be limited, that privelige should be earned, and that prison shouldn’t be a training ground for more and better crooks.

In the Yahoo article cited above, I applauded the sheriff’s decision to eliminate salt, ketchup, coffee, and so forth from his prisoners’ diet. How long is a guy gonna be in a county jail, anyway? A few months without salt or coffee or ketchup won’t kill him, and hardly constitutes torture, but would certainly increase the discomfort factor of “being in jail.”

…but the idea of a guy getting out of a twenty-year stretch, finding a job, and trying to get a life, only to be sent a bill for thousands of dollars and offered a convenient payment plan for the cost of jailing him… man, that sounds REALLY bad. That sounds like the kind of thing that’s engineered to turn a guy back into a crook, or a homeless bum at best.

The article explains that failure or refusal to pay can lead to courts attaching or garnishing your wages, tax refunds, and other income or property. This strikes me as nuts. I mean, the whole POINT of JAIL is to MAKE YOU WANT TO LEAVE, and make you wanna BE GOOD when you get out, and NOT GO BACK, right?

Statistics tell me that guys who get out of prison very often wind up back in prison. This would indicate we’re ALREADY doing something wrong, here. So, now, we wanna add a major frustration factor to the lives of the guys who just got out? We wanna make it even harder for them to “make it” in the outside world?

Furthermore, as many credit card outfits can tell you, debt collecting is tricky. Getting ORDINARY people to pay their bills can be an ordeal, and quite often, it’s cheaper financially to simply let the debt lapse than it is to hound them into paying it. And this is ordinary people who qualify for credit cards!

…and state and local governments have decided to start doing this with EX-CONS? Sounds like a losing proposition from the start, if you ask me. Maybe we could get people like Michael Milken or Martha Stewart to cover their costs, but I don’t know about those guys who did fifteen years for shooting a convenience store clerk while robbing him of $50, you know?

Thoughts?

2

I say for those that are given long term sentences, yeah take 'em for all their worth. And do this while they’re in prison, not after they get out. If you commit murder and you get sentenced for 20 years, and also have property valued at $150,000, then this needs to be taken and sold before you get out. So when you do get out, you can start over with out having to get a bill. The cost of keeping those in prison is sometimes more expensive then some companies CEOs salaries.

I totally disagree with going after the familes though. They are not the ones who are committing the acts.

3

Evidence that sadists often find their way into corrections, or that corrections itself, tends to create or foster sadism amongst its employees.

4

Well, corrections is tough work. It’s ruined many a naive idealist (and a few realists). Get taken hostage by inmates and be mistreated for a week or so (like happened to some of my co-workers) and you will re-assess your core beliefs. Get played for a fool once too often by inmates working on your better nature to scam you, and you will tend to not show your better nature to your charges. Start out in corrections with stereotypical beliefs and prejudices, and you will tend to notice and remember mainly those things that re-inforce your beliefs and prejudices.

Back to the OP: There is a role for restorative justice. But IMHO restitution from the offender should go first and foremost to the victims of his/her crime, and said victims’ community. To try to make up government budget shortfulls by imposing financial penalties on offenders that they can never hope to pay, and that may prevent them from successfully re-entering society, will cost us more in the long run.

5

Sounds a lot like the old practice of forfeiture of lands and goods. I don’t see how one can do this, without causing a family to suffer, even if the family is not named specifically. Losing a house and land, is going to cause more than a convict to suffer in most cases, I’d think.

I’d be more in favor of a shift to a different older practice. Using jails and prisons for holding facilities for trial and a stopping place on the way to a hard labor facility:

I realize there would be exceptions to not using confinement as punishment, but see this as one possible alternative. The hard labor I’m referring to would be the public account system.

On preview, Qadgop makes a great point. Restitution. I’d think the labor would increase the number of prisoners able to actually meet financial responsibility of paying restitution.

6

Absolutely. Selling off property that someone already has is one thing, as long as it isn’t also utilized by family, but making onerous repayment schedules that are impossible to subsist upon doesn’t seem to be a very effective means of rehabilitating prisoners or facilitating their rejoining of society.

Didn’t someone post a thread in the Pit a little while back about someone who was exonerated in the UK maybe but still asked to pay for his imprisonment?

Also, I’m not sure that cutting salt out of prisoner’s diets is a good idea. I can see the argument that coffee or ketchup are luxuries and should be used as rewards, but salt is so cheap, easy to provide, and a necessary nutrient that I cannot see justifying eliminating it. When we lock people up, especially considering the proportion that are incarcerated for non-violent drug offenses, remember that we have a responsibility to incarcerate these people humanely.

I’ll take the time now to say thanks to people like QtM working to provide humane prison conditions.

7

So, you believe that being unneccessarily mean towards prisoners is fine because they’re untrustworthy scammers and can potentially harm an officer and some have harmed officers?

8

Above was in response to Qadgop the Mercotan :smack:

9

Where did I say that I believe that?

If you’ve read any of my past thread contributions on life in prison (and there have been more than a few), you’ll see I strongly advocate that the inmate is in prison as his punishment, not in prison to be punished. I provide medical care for my patients, who happen to be inmates while they’re under my care. The fact that they’re inmates doesn’t change the fact that I take care of them, it just alters some of the things I’m able to do for them (and many get better care in prison than a lot of americans are able to get).

Being cruel to people (inmates or otherwise) does the cruel person as much harm as it does the victim of the cruelty. But corrections is tough work. And not everyone who is in corrections work should be. Which was my original point.

10

My point exactly. It hadn’t occurred to me to think about the victims, but restitution is already a part of the justice system, and I can’t complain about that. But there’s a difference between forcing a crook to pay for the damage he caused, and forcing a crook to pony up for what it cost to guard and feed him in a place he didn’t wanna be in the first place.

I’ve thought about “hard labor,” sure. But what if the guy refuses? What do you do, enslave him? This strikes me as a solution worse than the problem.

As to salt: yes, salt and iodine are necessary to the diet, but most pre-prepared foodstuffs already contain a fair amount of the stuff. I’m certainly not in favor of starving anyone or causing deficiency diseases. On the other hand, if it will save money by not bothering to provide salt shakers or those little paper envelopes of salt, well, let 'em suffer… so long as they are not harmed.

I don’t see how you can NOT harm a family by confiscating an inmate’s property. I mean, if the guy’s a single person, no kids, no spouse, that’s one thing… but what if he has a wife and kids, and now that he’s in the can, Mom needs the house to raise kids in, and the car to get to work? What do we do, assess half the value of everything, make her liquidate, and confiscate half the funds? Maybe we have HER start making payments? This is crazy, and potentially VERY destructive… especially for a country that claims to revere “family values.” Seems like the main thing we’d be reinforcing in the next generation is “The government will take all you got, through no fault of yours, if they want. Anything goes.”

So, you believe that being unneccessarily mean towards prisoners is fine because they’re untrustworthy scammers and can potentially harm an officer and some have harmed officers?

Define “unnecessarily mean.” When I worked in a mental institution, we had plenty of patients remanded by the courts, and we learned that some of those were the next best thing to “hardened crooks” you were likely to find. You learned very quickly that to cut THESE guys any slack was something you were likely to regret. We had rules, and we enforced them, and the rules were approved by the state.

By “unnecessarily mean,” do you mean “enforcing the rules, being tough, no exceptions” or do you mean “clockin’ 'em upside the head every so often to show 'em who’s boss?” I’d be in favor of the former, but way against the latter.

11

Exactly. The manpower necessary to oversee an unwilling worker is quite high, and one usually doesn’t recover enough from the forced work to make it a financially viable equation. My office and our staff bathroom facilities are cleaned by inmate “volunteers” and some of these guys are just not motivated. Once in a while you get a hard worker, and you treasure them.

This can be a tough area to figure out. No frills, but there needs to be a certain degree of “comfort” provided for the people serving long sentences, or they may end up too dysfunctional to be able to make restitution or provide for themselves after discharge from prison. Also there need to be rewards for good behavior. Single cell, a community toilet at the end of the hall instead of a toilet next to your bed open for all to see and hear (and smell), etc. or there is no reason to behave.

12

…and by the same token, when you DO get a hard worker, and the staffers are willing to speak up for him, there should be privelige, yes? Something to pay off? Incentives for him (and others) to reform, and work within the system? Or should we just kick 'em in the ass, 'cuz that’s what prison’s all about? :smack:

Very true. I was thinking more of county and local jails than prisons; anyone who’s ever read anything about the history of Alcatraz can tell you that when time gets TOO hard, there is a price to pay… and Society picks up the tab. But for some screwup who got in a bar fight, I don’t see where not being able to salt his beans for a month will hurt him. Then again, Qadgop would know better than I would.

The only argument I can provide for that is a political one – namely, that crooks should do harder and harder time, and suffer more and more, and be forced to pay back every dime it cost to lock 'em up. Because it all looks so pretty on paper, and it will help get me reelected. :smiley: :smiley: :smiley:

Other than that, I gotta go with the Mercotan. Plain sense, simply put.

13

I put it forth as an alternative, not something mandatory. As far as being worse than the problem, from the site I linked to above:

I know here we have work-release programs, but these are viewed as a privilege, rather than something mandatory. Not all inmates even qualify. I realize labor is not going to be an end all solution, but I do see it as peferable to seizing assets mentioned in the OP, if charging prisoners is a concern. I also see how this is somewhat idealistic, if the choice was between losing all one’s assets and providing labor. My idea was to throw out the seizure all together, and look at other options.

14

Well, I can appreciate that. I’m just trying to envision a system in which inmates are FORCED to work/provide labor in which they have no stake. Somehow, I can’t see that being wildly profitable; the cost of guarding and “encouraging” them, it seems to me, would very much work against its profitability.

“Teaching inmates to work,” well… I dunno. Depends on the program, and on the work. More than one prison has claimed glory for its “work skills program,” but how much demand is there in the outside world for someone who makes really good license plates?

Preferable, perhaps… but to whom? Seems to me the sort of chap who’d kill a convenience store clerk for the $50 in the register that he could have got WITHOUT shooting anyone is in no position to make those kinds of decisions… and I sure wouldn’t count on him to do anything useful while inside OR pay the system back when he gets out. Furthermore, it seems to me that expecting him to pay it all back – or even a substantial enough portion of it to matter – gives him one more excuse to say, “Aw, hell with it. I’m gonna pull another convenience store job.”

Furthermore… who are the most expensive prisoners to feed, house, guard, and look after? The Lifers and the Death Row inmates. How we gonna get THEM to pay for anything? Sell their corpses to science? And if we don’t, aren’t we being inherently unfair, here?

Ultimately, it seems to me that only two kinds of prisoners are going to be at all successful in this situation:

(1) A white-collar crook with huge assets that can be seized or handed over voluntarily. Not many of these.
(2) A crook who has honestly been rehabilitated, and is willing and able to get a good job, work in society, be a good boy for the rest of his life and make payments to the State that locked him up in the first place, despite the adjustment problems and frustrations of being an ex-con. It might work, sure, but is it really right to add one more burden to these guys’ load? Particularly considering that for every guy like this, I’m sure there’d be at least five who would never pay a dime.

In short, it seems to me that we’re proposing screwing the people who work the hardest and have the best attitude. What kind of payoff is this for hard work?

I agree; I’m very much inclined in this direction. I’m really sick of this attitude so many politicians seem to have that prisons and prisoners are not OUR problem, and that the situation should be made to yield its own solution… even when that solution is counterproductive for individuals, or ultimately, even society as a whole. The *60 Minutes * article I mentioned in the OP really cheesed me off (basically, several women in prison contributed to a book project; the book wound up being published, whereupon the women were suddenly hit with bills of up to a quarter million dollars that they were expected to pony up to pay for their incarceration… despite the fact that each woman’s share of the royalties came to something like $5000).

15

Point taken, as I said not all inmates would qualify, and it wasn’t meant as a suggested option for all inmates.

In the case here, it’s not working jobs involving the manufacture of license plates. We don’t have such a business. It’s inmates working in jobs here in the community. Businesses choose to participate, and though it’s a small town, over 100 businesses participate. In our case, it’s also not the facility claiming glory, it received a NACo (National Association of Counties) achievement award for its program.

Members of the community? Once you’ve seized the assets, there’s nothing else to take. A working person with skills to hold down a job, seems more likely to be productive once allowed back into society. Even here, I’ll admit to less than perfection. Some people claim an overall great outcome, when the rates of recidivism are really negligible in the differences. However this .pdf file discusses the good and bad, and raises the point:

and the footnote attached to it, says in part:

Not sure how this applies, as a person convicted of murder is not eligible for the program.

Didn’t see my suggestion as one applying to them. Because it can’t apply to all inmates, it’s not a viable solution? Or are you typing this in response to the idea of charging prisoners at all?

Agreed.

16

I didn’t read through this whole thread.

There are several states that alow the government to try and gain compensation for the cost of incarceration. However it is a very common practice that this is never done except in extraordinary cases.

For example a guy/woman in Massachusetts wrote a book on his/her criminal exploits (cannot remember the gender) and made like $800,000 on the book. The crook found him/herself with a bill for $45,000 from the state of Massachusetts for costs of incarceration.

I can agree with it in cases like that.

17

My husband works in corrections. Before I met him, and started discussing all of the problems in the system, I was pretty hostile to the ideas of inmates having “luxuries” like weight rooms and other recreational items/activities.

I learned that one of the most important reasons for giving those things to the prisoners is the safety of the staff. A bored inmate is a dangerous inmate: too much time on one’s hands often leads to mischief. Secondly, an active inmate is a tired inmate, who just wants to crash after excersize, and not get rowdy.

Thirdly, there’s a carrot-and-stick aspect. It is very difficult to control an inmate who has utterly nothing to lose by being violent or disruptive. Often, the threat of loss of privledges is enough to quell misbehavior. (My husband once stopped a disturbance in its tracks when he threatened to take away the inmates’ popcorn machine.) My husband worked in Super-Max for a while-- with inmates who had nothing but a windowless cell-- and it was the worst place he ever worked.

As for your comment about prison being a “training ground”, in some respects, it is. But there’s no way to avoid this unless you keep the inmates utterly isolated from one another, which is not only exhorbitantly expensive, but also detrimental to their mental health. (Isolation can cause mental illness in the strongest people.)

I don’t think anyone who has ever been within shouting distance of one would call a jail “comfortable” even with coffee and ketchup.

I have a small problem with this sherriff’s decision. Any kid on the block will tell you it’s not a good idea to poke that mean dog behind the fence with a stick, because next time he gets a chance, he may bite you. As I said before, jail life is no picnic in the park as it is, and the last thing the staff should want is an adversarial position in which it looks like they’re just “screwing” with the inmates because they can. Resentment in inmates is bad enough without just arbitrarily taking things away to make them extra “uncomfortable.”

Inmates are often somewhat reasonable people. If you tell them that they can’t have this or that any more because of budget cuts or safety reasons, they may grumble, but they’ll generally accept it. If you’re just taking something away from them seemingly just to be “mean”, you’re putting your staff people in a difficult position.

Many do return to prison, but it’s not because they WANT to be there. In fact, many will make strenouous efforts to avoid it. Prison is not a fun place to be. At best, it’s noisy, uncomfortable, utterly lacking in privacy and dangerous. I don’t think even the most hardened criminal would tell you he likes it in there.

There are many reasons why people return to prison, including the obvious economic ones. Reasonably, an ex-inmate cannot expect to get a high-paying job. At best, he’s going to have a somewhat menial job with a low salary. (Yes, there are exceptions, but for the most part, inmates have trouble getting even low-paying work after release. People just don’t trust them.) Why bust one’s ass at thankless, hard labor when you can make a week’s salary in just a few moments of crime?

Secondly, many inmates come from families with an extensive criminal history. Once they’re released, the only place they can go is home, and they can soon find themselves enveloped in a criminal behavior again.

Thirdly, prison has very slim chances of making someone “want to be good.” It just gives them further incentive not to get caught the next time. A man can only reform if he wants to, after all. Nothing can induce him to change if he doesn’t desire to do so. Harsher punishment will only make him more resentful and hate-filled.

18

I was going to post a longer message, but Lissa’s already posted most of what I would have said.

Unlike some of the people here, I actually have experience working in a prison. Incarceration’s biggest success is this: it seperates criminals from general society. Rehabilitation is nice, but I haven’t seen or heard an idea yet that can force a person to become rehabilitated. As for retribution, I have no use for it. I could go nuts at my job and make people’s lives miserable. But what would it serve? I’ll still have to go back to work tomorrow and next week and next year. Creating pointless resentment will eventually make my life harder.

The biggest thing we seek in prisons is control. We basically are dealing with the segment of society that couldn’t control itself, so we have to impose control upon them. Discipline and the threat of punishment is one means to do this. But privileges and the promise of reward is another means. Any good prison system will use both. Punish those who do wrong and reward those who do right.

As I’ve been hearing about the abuses in Abu Ghraib, I’ve been thinking that the people running these prisons probably thought they were running things “the way they’re supposed to be”. People with no experience in actual corrections are going to get all the ideas from bad movies and TV shows. Show biz corrections has no more bearing on reality than show biz medicine or police work or law does.

There’s another military prison in Iraq called al Hillah (if I have the spelling correct). It hasn’t been in the news much because there haven’t been any problems there. Even Amnesty International says that they haven’t recieved any reports of human rights violations from there. When the Abu Ghraib scandal became public some reporters asked the commander of al Hillah why his prison wasn’t experiencing the same problems. He said it was because he recognized that running a prison is an acquired skill like anything else. So he found a bunch of National Guardsmen who worked in prisons in their civilian life and put them in charge of the prison. These people actually knew what they were doing.

19

I hope you’re right about that other prison, but 2 of the MPs charged at Abu Ghraib - described as the most violent/vicious - were experienced corrections officers:

20

obligatory:
Stanford Prison Experiment

Prison Rape

rarely if ever have i seen a discussion on the Internet where a majority of people have expressed empathy for the prison population. the Stanford experiment highlights the illusory standpoint of moral superiority that these posters operate from. the blatant disregard for the fact that around 1/2 of those imprisoned are there for non-violent offenses is a sad thing.

i think it’s safe to say prison is useless for reducing violent crime; the opposite is likely closer to the truth. 2,300,000,000 current prisoners and however many more millions of former prisoners is a detriment to society as a whole. i don’t see how doing something like charging prisoners the cost of imprisonment deviates from an already broken methodology.

shrug … no doubt the Sheriff has got to have enough cells for the vast scourge of drug-addicts and marijuana dealers. why can’t he just release some more rapists and murders? makes no sense.