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| Making an inmate bear some of the costs |
| By kansascity.com |
| Published: 05/08/2009 |
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Some inmates pay for their crimes and jail stays By LAURA BAUER - The Kansas City Star A night’s stay in a new 268-bed lockup in southwest Missouri will get you uniformed pants and shirt, a jail bunk and three squares a day. All for just $45. Stay a year, and you’ll shell out $16,425. Like other incarceration agencies across the country, the Taney County jail is charging inmates who have been sentenced to its facility. Sheriff Jimmie Russell says it’s a no-brainer. “Why should the taxpayers have to pay; they didn’t do anything wrong,” he said. “Inmates committed the crime, and they should pay.” As states and counties try to cut costs and pay the bills, some think the trend will only continue. The evidence is stacking up. In Georgia, legislators debated a measure this session that would allow state officials to collect up to $40 a day from “financially capable” inmates. This week, the City Council in Springfield, Ore., voted to charge inmates $60 a day. In February, officials at the Des Moines County jail in Burlington, Iowa, drew national headlines after they reportedly considered charging inmates for toilet paper. And earlier this year, Maricopa County, Ariz., began charging inmates $1.25 a day for meals in the county jail. Sheriff Joe Arpaio, known for having inmates wear pink underwear and sleep in tents, said his county could save $900,000 a year by charging those inmates who could pay. Kansas Rep. Pat Colloton, a Leawood Republican, has seen the trend. “As a general rule, criminal justice has gone to more and more trying to put the burden on the offender to pay for his incarceration,” said Colloton, who sees a downside to that. Colloton, chairwoman of the House Corrections and Juvenile Justice Committee, said inmates could end up with massive bills to pay when they leave the lockup. “Many of these individuals have a difficult time re-entering society anyway,” she said. “We don’t want them so burdened with debt that any legitimate attempt at re-entry is impossible and they turn back to crime to pay the fees you just imposed on them.” Overland Park has collected money from city offenders for several years as a way to recoup some of the cost the city pays to Johnson County for using its jail. Defendants convicted of a municipal offense are charged $35 a day for each day they stay in the county jail. Last year, the county billed Overland Park about $320,000 for jail use and the city recouped about $126,000 from municipal defendants, said Karen Arnold-Burger, the city’s presiding judge. “We’ve gotten several calls in the last three or four months from all over the country asking how we do this, how we set it up,” Arnold-Burger said. Making an inmate bear some of the costs isn’t just about the poor economy, said Maj. Kevin Spaulding of the Greene County Sheriff’s Department in southwest Missouri. For several years the county has charged a booking fee as well as medical co-pays. “If they are in jail, they should be responsible for their own expenses,” Spaulding said. “Once you start looking at things, you’re like, ‘Why haven’t we thought of this before?’Read more. If link has expired, check the website of the article's original news source. |
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