Perry County to charge inmates $25 a day for cells.

[Viktorthepirate]

Once he gets out and has a debt to pay for his time in jail, I'm sure recidivism won't be an issue at all.

This is gross.

[BjornP]

Some of the local populace is weighing in on the issue:

If a inmate is being housed waiting to go in front of judge. Then once in front of judge, if released on own recognince (sp), and/or case dismissed. Then no fee should be assessed. But, if found guilty and being housed for whatever the reason, then there should be a fee implemented. We as taxpayers should not pay to house criminals. Sad, when an inmate has a temperature controlled living facility, bathrooms, tv not to mention 3 meals a day. This is treatment for the*Criminals* we're talking about, not the unfortunate.

Its time people stopped looking the other way and stop worrying about offending a criminal and all the liberal idiots that try to justify them being a criminal. Criminals care less about the damage they do to the people they rob...shoot...or rape. Its time they get the same courtesy they give everyone else.

I think its fair. Someone has to pay to feed these people, pay the utilities, etc. Kentucky already does this and allows the inmate to pay so much a month after they are released and if they miss a payment they go back to jail.

I'll tell you what is unfair. Hard working people who have never been in jail, but have been paying to house criminals for years. There is the injustice.

Why should the taxpayers have to "pay" the consequences of the criminals mistakes? The one responsible for the jail stay, should have to pay. I don't understand the issue.

Hell yes charge them whether they're convicted or not I don't want to pay for some idiot Hotel while they can't behave

https://www.facebook.com/wsilnews3/?hc_ ... 6o&fref=nf

If that's the majority local opinion, it looks like the feature will stay for at least a couple generations. Or, at least assuming the younger generations are generally as ok with pay-for-stay prisons as those commentators.

[Hastur]

It the inmates are renting the cells, what is included in the price? Will they be able to do modifications? Sublet? There must be some local ordinance saying what someone renting an apartment is allowed to do with it. In Sweden I think you're allowed to modify everything except the physical walls, floor and roof and fixed appliances.

If they refuse to pay the rent, will they be evicted?

[Ph64]

"as well as reimbursement for medical costs they incur while imprisoned by the county."

I'm curious if this means that if you get shanked by another inmate, beaten to a pulp, etc, that you are responsible for the medical costs incurred because the jail failed to control the other inmate?

[Martin Hash]

There's got to be more to this story? There's no protection against bankruptcy like Student Loan debt, so bam, threat gone.

It could be political law&order grandstanding, appealing to the same people who want to send Illegal Immigrants back, but it doesn't seem to be leveraged into any candidates' campaigns?

Explaining it with the worst possible motive is probably the correct one: it's intended to keep people in jail indefinitely because that's the penalty for not paying. (I heard about this being used in The South on a Frontline episode. Before they can get out to declare bankruptcy, they're found guilty of not paying at a pre-release hearing, and thrown back in the slammer. Taxpayers continue to pay for their incarceration.)

[Speaker to Animals]

The media always seemed to like to make this a Southern thing, which is partly true, but holy fuck the Midwestern states are far worse with this type of shit.

Ferguson riots also happened because a predatory municipal government had criminalized a majority of its population for revenue. I saw some really crazy shit going down in the Cook county family court system too. They LOVE to lock people up in the Midwest, often for nothing at all, and then they lock you in to the system with all the fees and penalties.

I can't believe it has not been challenged all the way to the top. Locking people up for not having money is pretty clearly unconstitutional. We banned debtors prisons in this country, and yet these rotten judges are still doing it.

[Speaker to Animals]

Also, in the South, their favorite bizarre punishment seems to be work farm prisons (i.e. plantations).

That's bad enough, but not in principle as bad as what the Midwest does. There isn't anything inherently immoral about requiring able-bodied prisoners to work on a farm to produce their own food. Where it runs into slavery territory is when they are forced to produce consumer goods or license plates against their will.

[DBTrek]

Sounds like we finally have a place to send Antifa.
Let's remind them about the racial disparity in criminal sentencing, then bus them all to Perry County to throw bike locks at the jails.
Let them be useful for once.

[The Conservative]

. . . I suppose it's too much to hope that refusing to pay results in you being evicted from jail?

Man . . . prison for profit has got to end. This is a bad idea.
You know where the money to run prisons comes from? It's called taxes.
Trying to grab an extra $25 per day, per prisoner, without voter input is shady as shit.
Make your case to the taxpayer and ask for more money, that's the system.

Can't do that, that be a debtor's prison and it's illegal in the US.

[Speaker to Animals]

Another thing.. historically, this is exactly how you make outlaws. When a government unjustly criminalizes people, and takes everything they own and turns them into criminals by default, those people tend to say fuck it, I will just become a real criminal or pirate.

This kind of predatory behavior on the part of government generates criminals and outlaws. They essentially make formerly law-abiding citizens into enemies of the state and they make the law the enemies of generally decent people. It shouldn't take a genius to see where that goes.

Do that shit to me and I could very well decide to become an outlaw. What else is there to do? You can't get a job because you have a criminal record now for having all your possessions stolen from you by a family court and then imprisoned because you can't pay some fabricated debt. Now you are locked into an indentured servitude with the state to take most of what you could earn if you do find a job, and when you don't find a job, they just round you up and lock you in a cage with real violent criminals. If I were completely locked out of decent society because my ex-wife wanted to go ride the cock carousel, with no real way to work in society, demonized by society as the villain when I was a good citizen before the crooked family court system got a hold of me, I'd have to figure out how to feed myself somehow. If the law is my enemy, why should I adhere to it? I only have to adhere to morality, and guess what geniuses, a lot of stuff that the state criminalizes is not inherently immoral.