The American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio released Nov. 9 the first comprehensive study of the practice of charging people in jail for time spent there, also known as “pay-to-stay” policies, reports the BBC.
The study revealed that some inmates have debts of up to $35,000, although the BBC found evidence that one man in Marion, Ohio owes $50,000 in pay-to-stay debt.
Pay-to-stay is not limited to the state of Ohio, however. With the exceptions of Hawaii and the District of Columbia, every state in the U.S. has a law authorizing the practice.
According to the BBC:
Dale Osborne, the jail administrator at the Multi-County Correctional Facility, makes the same argument for pay-to-stay that's been made since the practice became legal in Ohio in the mid-90s.
"It offsets the expenses that the taxpayers are required to have," he says. "The more revenue I can generate within a facility, the less the taxpayers have to pay."
But he admits that while the programme bills for about $2m a year, they collect only about $60,000-$70,000. That's about a 3% collection rate.
The sum that is able to be collected doesn't go straight into the county coffers, either — the jail contracts with a company called Intellitech Corporation, which acts as a collections agent, sending letters and making phone calls to former inmates. If the debtor sends a check to Intellitech or arranges a payment plan with them, 30% of the money goes to the county and 70% goes to Intellitech.
Can we really justify further impoverishing those released from prison, ruining their credit scores, and hounding them with collection agencies, all for the sake of a meager 3 percent collection rate?
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