Should prisoners get a bill at the end of a stay in jail?

Funny.. My mom did ten years. She got out and was straddled with a 2.5K bill for parole fees.. If she didn’t pay the bill she would violate the parole and go back in for another ten years.

So how the fuck does my mom come up with the cash. She was 50 with no real work experience and a felon. Not even Taco Bell would hire her being a felon.

I hope you don’t think this is a serious proposal. You get disability. Maybe you should be making doilies to payback what you get.

@johnpowell I’m assuming it to be a sliding scale. Prisoners like Martha Stewart, and O.J. Simpson , and Bernie Madoff, would pay the most and those like your mom would be forgiven. Sounds better than 100%. Which now seems like a dick move for a country to do. My medication side effects hinder my ability to work reliably as a full time clerk/cashier. Maybe I can start a YouTube channel and make $3.50 a month.

That is minor compared to poor people doing time for weed.

If the state wants to lock up people for stupid shit then the state needs to pay for it. If the taxpayers do not want to lock up a crazy that falls through the ceiling of a convenience store they need to make it legal.

@johnpowell Good news for Canadians and maybe in USA in the future. The country is looking to dropping the charges for those citizens arrested for pot possession. Pot for recreational use will be legalized in Oct 17, 2018. Just don’t take any over the border. I believed that Obama pardoned lots of federal prisoners for weed possession in 2017.

January 19, 2017[edit]
Obama commuted the prison sentences of 330 federal inmates, particularly drug offenders, on Thursday, January 19, 2017, his last full day in office. Obama did so, as one of his final acts in office, in order to reduce what he viewed as overly harsh punishments

Hell no! And such proposals are another clear cut example of how the society taxes the poor. The prisons in this country are bursting at the seams with people, ostensibly criminals whose REAL reason for incarceration and the label of criminal is the inability to afford a decent lawyer. For those of you who don’t yet understand it, in practical terms, being poor IS A CRIME. And far beyond the facts of guilt or innocence when it comes down to who goes to jail, are the cold economic truths about working the legal system. Where are the millionaires on death row?

ALMOST NOTHING PISSES ME OFF MORE THAN PEOPLE GETTING IN LEGAL TROUBLE FOR WEED. and I don’t smoke it either

That’s the other thing. Have you ever even heard of a wealthy person going to jail for possession or smoking dope?

REMEMBER THIS GUY??

https://www.fluther.com/users/buster/

Last visit: December 1st, 2013

HE KILLED HIMSELF

Why did that happen? (keep in mind he was from Portland and we knew the same people)

Staying with family in Tennessee and ran with a minimal amount of weed in his sock. SIX MONTHS . Got nabbed.

He had been saying he hated it there and wanted to come back to Portland.

So he did the six months in jail and was forced to stay in Tennessee (which he hated). For five years. So he shot his face off.

For 20 bucks worth of weed.

@johnpowell We may not always agree, but we agree about this. I know so many people who got sideways with the law because of weed and in tiny amounts. Yet… it’s perfectly legal to get obliterated on liquor. Not right. Weed is such a non issue here in Tennessee where meth and hillbilly heroin are destroying lives. I don’t even have words.

@ARE_you_kidding_me :: Weed has been legal in Oregon for years. Society functions. And we have pushed stupid jail weed money to healthcare and schools.

THE HORROR

@buster and I probably would have been great pals had I known him.

In the US, the penal system is a bad joke. The laws too.

Many American prisons, are a business. I could go into conspiracy theories about keeping minorities from voting, and kick backs, but I won’t.

Prisoners “pay” plenty, for incarceration.

I bet Trumpers could get behind this though…

In America there is a trend now towards private jails, which I find horrific. The idea that possibly private business might be paid even more by the prisoners is terrifying to me.

Even if the money went to pay back the government I don’t like it.

We have to come up with something better than that.

I think some people do get fined as part of a sentence, so I guess in a way that pays into the penal system maybe? I don’t know how that is viewed.

As a side note, I’ve also always thought treating MJ very differently legally than alcohol made very little sense. Although, I do think legalizing it causes more of it to be used, and I don’t think that is a very good idea, but I don’t think being an alcoholic is a good idea either. Punishing someone with jail time for personal drug use seems a little crazy to me.

Many of the prisoners in jail got there because of their lack of financial support that cause them to commit crimes. Adding the financial pressure to them prior to leaving the jail won’t solve any problem, you’ll be unnecessarily over-punishing them. The jail system has already benefited the government by having the prisoners work part-time for free in the jail (which benefit the prisoners as well as it gives them some practical skill to survive in society) such as making car plates, mining stones, plowing land, educating people, etc.

Since the jails here in the US are being privately run, I say NO…especially since NOT ALL of those going to jail are even guilty!!! I also don’t feel like they should be paid to work. That money should go toward their room & board!!!

So if you can’t pay the tab, you go back to prison? Sounds like debtors prison to me. I thought that was outlawed years ago.

@LadyMarissa they get paid very very little for their labours in jail. The products they produce subsidise their stay, so don’t worry about that.. Those poor corporations.

There should always be a cost on the people (i.e. taxpayer) for imprisoning someone. If it’s the other way around, the incentives will be to try to lock up more and more people and funnel people into prison instead of college. In some areas this is already happening: School-to-Prison Pipeline.

In NY they get a minimal amount for working. It is something like $0.70 per hour. – a 4 hour shift is the max so they clear $2.80 which is usually spent in the commisary for ridiculously over-priced sna cks or toiletries.
Most of the inmates do not have a source of income when they leave the prison. Where are they supposed to live>? How are they expected to find a job and pay rent. The only jobs most likely are minimum wage which is barely enough to feed themselves or pay utilities. Then the state slaps on reimbursement charges! And quite often there are credit card charges at usurious rates of 29% that have kept increasing while he was incarcerated. No wonder they resort to crime again.
What usually happens is family members or friends give the guy a permanent loan so he is out of debt and can start fresh. If the guy has alienated his family and friends then he’s out of luck and will be back in prison in no time.

We helped a family friend pay off all his debts and start a new business after he was released. It saved him. Without hope he would surely have ended his life.

“Thoughts and prayers” were useless. It was $$$ that saved him.

There are five aspects to punishment of criminals: deterrence, retribution, inacapacitation, restitution and rehabilitation. None of these involve paying for jail time, which is irrelevant.

@LuckyGuy

Funny story. My mom was in the same prison as Diane Downs

So my best friend after high school had a dad that worked at Spectra-Physics as a electrical engineer. His other son worked there repairing supermarket scanners.

So Spectra-Physics wanted to outsource some labor. They went to the prison my mom was in. And she ended up fixing scanners for Spectra-Physics for a buck a hour. My best friends brother was my moms “boss”..

This took a really long to put together. It took me visiting my mom and getting a picture and him seeing that picture to go.. “Hey WTF, that is Suzy.”

So for the next year Nate was the bridge between me and my mom. I asked Nate to be totally honest with her. So I got letters from mother with Gems like “Nate said he bought you 50 dollars worth of “the white” and went out with Aaron and Jessie looking for skinheads to beat up.”..

But yes.. What my mom got paid per hour was not enough to buy a single packet of top raman in the canteen. A travesty.

That was a publicly traded company using prison labor for 1/15th what they would be paid on the outside world.

Blame the Mexicans for stealing your jobs.

@johnpowell Oh man! And, no doubt, Spectra-Physics touted the program as teaching prisoners life skills.
I wonder if they hired any prisoners when they got out.

LOL no. They don’t hire Felons.

But this was back in the go-go 90’s. Taco Bell was starting people at three and four bucks above minimum wage.

In 2000 I quit the theater and found a job at Hitachi making hard drive platters in a clean-room. It was so hot I went from dropping off my resume to getting starting work the next day. They were hiring people with no job history for 15 a hour.

Which is what is so concerning about our current labor market. Unemployment rate is around the same and the people coming into the labor force is increasing keeping the U6 steady.

Something is going on and management seems to be willing to have shifts not be filled over increasing wages.

But stock by-backs are all the rage when wages under-perform inflation…

Seriously.. Something is very off. We should have seen significant upward pressure on wages a year ago.