TIL 40 states in the US charge you $20-$80 a day for being incarcerated in prison.

Very weird that I am so old and have literally never heard this mentioned in a TV show or book or movie or anything.

In four out of five states, if you go to prison, you are literally paying for the time you spend there.

As you can guess, this results in crippling debt as soon as you’re released.

The county gets back a fraction of what they hold over your head the rest of your life until you commit suicide(or die naturally and peacefully with the sword of damocles hanging over your head).

$20-$80 a day according to Rutgers.

Counties apparently sue people and employ wage garnishment to get back the money that majority of people obviously cannot pay back.

rutgers.edu/…/states-unfairly-burdening-incarcera…

Potatisen,

The US is in free fall. Kinda crazy to see how passive the people are there.

BolexForSoup,
BolexForSoup avatar

Plenty of us are doing all we can fuck off. College students across the country been getting their shit kicked in by cops and altright shit heads for days now and you’re repeating this Reddit crap. You have no clue how hard many of us are working to better things here.

Sir_Kevin,
@Sir_Kevin@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

So many people get a hard-on about the 2nd Amendment but they’re all too spineless to invoke it.

BolexForSoup,
BolexForSoup avatar

I want you to tell me what would you think would happen if LGBT people started going around using guns to solve their problems in America.

Sir_Kevin,
@Sir_Kevin@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

Fair point indeed.

BolexForSoup,
BolexForSoup avatar

Sorry, I could’ve been less curt in my response. Appreciate you seeing the larger point there.

Varyk, (edited )

Americans are protesting and many are getting physically assaulted and arrested for protests everyday, and there are many civil rights and labor rights groups constantly bringing lawsuits against the government, actively changing policy.

Anticorp,

Unfortunately the government has been very busy snatching up essential liberties and writing bullshit laws, and it’s almost impossible to keep up with the protests and lawsuits. The politicians get paid to be there, and can spend all of their time on legislation. Once they pass something, boom, it’s in effect. Then it costs organizations and citizens tons of time and money to protest and appeal what was so easily done by the legislators.

Varyk,

Fortunately, there are a lot of people who don’t give up because stuff gets hard.

Anticorp,

True, but we’re losing ground.

Varyk,

And gaining ground in other areas.

It’s the long and arduous process of fighting for and maintaining civil rights, nobody is going to snap their fingers and make everything better.

BolexForSoup,
BolexForSoup avatar

So, what? We should just give up and die? I don’t understand what your point is other than just open ended pessimism

Mango,

What can I do?

phoneymouse,

Just to really fuck up your life when you get out

sebinspace,

The system is working as intended

Ephera,

In particular, to force you back into crime, to be able to pay for that debt.

metaStatic,

just declare bankruptcy

Sir_Kevin,
@Sir_Kevin@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

I wish i knew why you were being downvoted but nobody offered a counter point. Bankrupcy seems like a logical solution for this situation.

metaStatic,

I hope kbin never federates downvotes because I couldn't care less

but it's probably people who got scammed with student loans they can't discharge with bankruptcy.

umbrella,
@umbrella@lemmy.ml avatar

great solution

aodhsishaj,

Absolutely, I mean I’m already a felon, what’s one more barrier to credit and gainful employment?

Trollception,

Bankruptcy isn’t a bad option if you don’t have any credit or have bad credit already. You can turn things around in a couple of months. Also I am unaware of employers performing a credit check as a basis for employment.

olav,
@olav@theweird.space avatar

@Trollception @aodhsishaj they do if there's a gov't clearance or you're touching corp money involved. But in most cases they'll let you explain what happened.

poprocks,

Depends on the company. Background checks can include credit checks. Any job with money or security clearance will check credit and large employers sometimes do as well.

Emma_Gold_Man,

Common in IT roles as well.

Codilingus,

Blows my mind, credit has nothing to do with IT skills?!

Emma_Gold_Man,

IT has a level of access to systems that makes management nervous. The fear is that an IT person in financial trouble could use that to embezzle, or be pressured to sell access to a malicious third party.

aodhsishaj,

You’ve chosen your username well.

nerdwallet.com/…/credit-score-employer-checking

Felonies also don’t help with getting a job. www.prisonpolicy.org/blog/2022/02/08/employment/

Bankruptcy, without a lawyer is not just a couple months. www.forbes.com/…/bankruptcy-on-credit-report/

Also another place where credit can affect your chances is housing businessinsider.com/…/credit-score-needed-to-rent…

And when it’s that bad you can just move into a relatives house right? www.repository.law.indiana.edu/…/viewcontent.cgi?…

acockworkorange,

Wait, are you unironically advocating for people not to declare bankruptcy after leaving prison with crippling debt?

aodhsishaj,

I’m saying it shouldn’t be necessary in the first place. You’re supposed to have paid your debt to society by being in there. Federal amd state tax money pay for you to be there, charging room and board is predatory.

Just declare bankruptcy bro! Is a very tone deaf response to what is essentially bonded labor.

acockworkorange,

I’m saying it shouldn’t be necessary in the first place.

Well no shit. Nobody’s defending this. Dude’s proposing something to help while legislation is in this shit state.

Just declare bankruptcy bro! Is a very tone deaf response to what is essentially bonded labor.

You need to get out of your own head if you think that was a response. No one’s out to get you.

Trainguyrom,

I interned at a bank and they do a credit check as a standard step for hiring someone. I also overheard HR at that bank talking about how they should stop running credit checks before hiring people because they can’t use the info from that for anything and it just costs money to run the credit check

olav,
@olav@theweird.space avatar

@aodhsishaj @metaStatic bankruptcy is by far not the worse thing you can do. Often trying to unbury yourself will take longer to get back to solvency.

We had to medical B out. Get cancer these days, particularly with a $6K+ deductible for a PPO and you're toast. We managed to switch to a HMO before surgery and we were still toast. And I had a Good Job.

File, get a pre-paid card then some high-interest you barely use, then some "normal" credit and it builds faster than you know

olav,
@olav@theweird.space avatar

@aodhsishaj @metaStatic

If you think bankruptcy is bad, look at all the rich people and corps that do it as often as possible

Edit: I mean Herr Trumptard has filed no less than six times to avoid paying people

jkrtn,

Did Donald file for personal bankruptcy or did a Donald business file for bankruptcy? It might be like stealing: legal and cool if you are a corporation and the victims are poors.

Audacious,

Corporations have more rights than the people, and rich people hide behind their companies. So, without looking it up, I’m guessing trump business.

ICastFist,
@ICastFist@programming.dev avatar

Rich people never pay what they owe, especially if they owe it to the gov’t. Unlike poor people, the police doesn’t knock on their door to get the money.

Daft_ish,

This golden oldie, “all hail the job creators, creators of all jobs.”

aodhsishaj,

Bankruptcy without a lawyer, a permanent address and transportation to the courts is a serious hurdle. People rotating out of prison are already at a disadvantage. My point is they shouldn’t be in debt when they leave prison in the first place. The whole point is that they paid their debt to society.

This isn’t, oh shit I’m in over my head in a cornerstore, restaurant, family warehouse, what have you. It’s very tone-deaf to not address the elephant in the room of these people entering society at a grave disadvantage.

The services below should not be necessary for every person incarcerated by the state. The system is broken.

legalbeagle.com/5666136-file-bankruptcy-prison.ht…

…nclc.org/…/bankruptcys-role-alleviating-criminal…

HawlSera,

Debtor’s Prison is illegal… happens anyway

b3an,
@b3an@lemmy.world avatar

So felons can do that, but students can’t with crushing loans. Cool

metaStatic,

cool and normal

can,

The US is starting to sound made up

BolexForSoup,
BolexForSoup avatar

God this hurt my soul

Varyk,

It was. Everywhere was.

can,

Yes, but the more I live and hear things about the states it starts to sound like satire or as if it’s a joke to see what other people will believe.

Varyk,

You’re just getting older, haha. The longer we live, the more we can’t help seeing what’s right in front of us.

FlashMobOfOne,
@FlashMobOfOne@lemmy.world avatar

I’d like to believe that. Social Media did a great job of reprogramming people.

Varyk,

Media did a great job before that, and humans tend to get conservative as they age, so I think there’s a lot of factors working together to make people more cynical than they ought to be.

can,

If only that were true for everyone.

Raffster,

Nah, it’s exactly the other way around. Except for a tiny minority. All the others have to ignore what’s around them in order to not go insane.

Varyk, (edited )

I can understand why it seems that way, but the broad American public supports civil and labor liberties, green energy, healthy and equitable policies in general; it’s the vocal minority that is subverting the will of the more fair-minded, rational and compassionate majority(sure would be nice if more than one out of every three or four people voted).

And I don’t even think most conservatives believe in the policies they support so much as they don’t comprehend what they’re supporting and they are afraid of relinquishing control over what they narrowly perceive as “power” and “freedom”.

The ones I’ve talked to don’t.

Codilingus,

I feel like most of them only vote R because they’re getting bamboozled into believing that the Rs stand for conservative, Christian, family values.

Varyk, (edited )

Anecdotally, ignorance and fear seems to be significant factors supporting conservative beliefs.

When I tell a liberal something that they aren’t expecting or that they didn’t know, they’ll respond with “what? How do you know that? Really?”

Then with a conservative, I usually get “No, no. Really? Well, I don’t know about that, anyway…”

And that’ll be some hard truth or contradicting statistic that the conservative doesn’t want to address or learn about because it will fly in the face of a fear or ignorance based belief.

can,

This is probably not the point you intended, but I basically read that as Conservatives are against growth, personal or otherwise.

Which is just sad. That sounds like an unrewarding life. I doubt they want my pity but they kind of already have it when I look past the hatred and think about how they’ve been swindled.

Varyk,

Yep, that’s a part of what I meant.

BruceTwarzen,

I honeatly think that a lot.

Mango,

It’s real and I’m here. Pls save me.

can,

I’d love to invite you up north but we need to get some housing first.

Mango,

We all have housing. It’s just a matter of prying the leeches off first.

can,

As long as the leeches are still there then we really don’t.

Mango,

Got any salt?

can,

The finest.

Mango,

WTB 1 salt. 5k /wave2 /glow:green

aeronmelon,

I left America over a decade ago due to a laundry list of grievances that I developed while having only ever lived in America.

Once I started living in other countries, I finally developed context to compare my American life with. And it just made things look so much worse than I had previously thought.

And now it feels like not a day can go by without learning some new awful truth about my former home.

Lucidlethargy,

It’s unfortunate you left… When good people leave, we’re stuck with more of the bad gaining power.

If we lose this country to the bad people even more than it’s already been lost, then the entire world may pay dearly as a result.

nilloc,

If he left a solid red or blue state, it doesn’t really matter. Our minority representation, first pst the pole voting and electoral college means that a lot of smart people from cities or solid blue areas can leave and nothing will change.

Plus OP’s an outlier, most of us can’t afford to relocate like this.

SaintWacko,

Where did you go, if you don’t mind me asking? It’s certainly something we’ve talked about…

aeronmelon, (edited )

I hopped around Southeast Asia until I landed in Japan.

It’s not easy here, and it’s not without its own problems, but it works much better for me.

(I’d probably still be in Singapore were it not for the heat. The food is 10/10 and dirt cheap, but I missed seasons.)

(I knew that answering this question would make the jerks upset somehow.)

Codilingus,

Do you have to struggle with the insane only work, no life, salary man/woman problems? Or did you find something that doesn’t follow that “life style?”

aeronmelon,

No, I see it but I don’t have to deal with it.

It’s also not as much of a constant as it used to be.

6mementomori,

isn’t every country made up after all?

can,

But this has begun sounding like made up details, like someone heard how we feel and they decided to play into those concerns to see how much we’d believe before calling them out.

gravitas_deficiency,

It’s called the American Dream because you’ve got to be asleep to believe it

unreasonabro,

it’s sad and conspicuous that all of the reasons you hear about these days that would actually justify going out and killing terrible people mostly all involve things the American government has done or permitted. Truly the driving force for evil in the world.

Varyk,

They’re barely a 200-year-old country; relevant for roughly 80 of those years, the states are not the ultimate driving force of anything, and certainly not a vague concept like evil.

This specific issue is a failing on part of its citizenry, in company of many failings, but the country is not a static moment in time defined by its failings.

halferect,

Believe it or not if you can’t pay… straight to jail

Varyk,

And then if you can’t pay after you get out, they’ll sue you. I can’t find evidence that you’ll go back to jail, but I’m sure it’s happened.

halferect,

youtu.be/eiyfwZVAzGw?si=7ziuV57fXMCOwfz8

elephantium,
@elephantium@lemmy.world avatar

I read the wiki page. Pretty barebones, but it did link to www.bbc.com/news/magazine-34705968

In theory, I could entertain an argument about having criminals repay some of the costs of dealing with them, that’s not what’s going on here.

The sum that is able to be collected doesn’t go straight into the county coffers, either - the jail contracts with a company

The jail gets 30%, the company gets 70%.

It really just looks like just another way to exploit prisoners for profit.

Varyk,

Yeah, that’s what the Rutgers article at the bottom of my post was for, more context.

There is no doubt that the prisons are using pay for stay as an excuse to hoover up more money from the most vulnerable populations.

InvaderDJ,

The very idea is absurd. It is so counter productive to the idea of rehabilitation. The prisons themselves say they aren’t a significant revenue stream. Trying to offset the cost of a societal need by charging fees to prisons doesn’t even make any sense. And the companies that are tasked with collecting this debt get 70% of what they collect which means that even the argument about offsetting the state’s cost doesn’t make sense.

It’s profit seeking, counter productive cruelty and that’s it. Just shameful.

elephantium,
@elephantium@lemmy.world avatar

Trying to offset the cost of a societal need by charging fees to prisons (sic) doesn’t even make any sense.

Sure it does. It costs $$$ to build jails and prisons and more $$$ to run them. Why should I, the victim, have to pay twice? (once for my car, which the thief stole, and again in my taxes to fund the legal system once the thief is caught)

I can very much entertain an argument like that (counter-argument, pay prisoners minimum wage for whatever work they do and charge the $20/day from that).

But that’s not what’s going on here.

This is about a collection agency figuring out how to profit from a captive audience. It deserves the same regard from us as prison phone operators do.

It’s really just another form of predatory bullshit.

The prisons themselves say they aren’t a significant revenue stream

This is crucial here, IMO. We could put whatever we want on the bills – hell, we could charge a million dollar fee for each sentence! That would fix the funding problems – but the simple truth is that most of the prisoners don’t have the money.

orrk,

the overwhelming majority of inmates are non-violent offenders, often times in prison for the heinous crime of: smoking weed, or some other petty crime

elephantium,
@elephantium@lemmy.world avatar

Okay? I don’t understand what point you might be trying to make with this statement, even if it were true.

But the actual figure is 45% for drug offenses. That is the single biggest category, but I find it disingenuous to characterize “less than half” as “overwhelming majority”.

orrk,

so, here is the fun bit about statistics, when you have more than say, 3-4 different options the thing with almost half generally is an overwhelming majority

elephantium,
@elephantium@lemmy.world avatar

No, it’s incredibly misleading. When you said that, I expected to find something like 80% of prisoners are there because of drugs. Instead, I find that it’s less than half.

orrk,

it’s not misleading at all? half is a REALLY large amount. like i get that this is an issue of humans not having math brains, but imagine if you will:

a bag with 20 marbles, 10 blue, 3yellow, 2red, 2pink, 1green, 1black, and 1 clear.

Bjornir,

If the issue was cost, you would build schools. A better educated population get less sick, earns more and thus pays more taxes, commit way less crimes, get less social welfare, in short it is a net gain in tax dollars.

Plus, someone who gets out of jail with a big debt will very likely cost way more to society than what could ever be recovered from them.

JustZ,

Back on my day prison was a nickle and we liked it.

elephantium,
@elephantium@lemmy.world avatar

But the important thing was to tie an onion on your belt, as it was the style at the time.

Resol,
@Resol@lemmy.world avatar

How to absolutely destroy your net worth:

Step 1: go to prison

There is no step 2.

nucleative,

Might be somewhat acceptable if a job was available while in prison to support these living expenses. That at least might improve confidence and start the rehabilitation process.

Oh wait, who am I kidding. Prison has nothing to do with rehabilitation.

Varyk,

Not in the states. US prisons are exploitative first and punitive second.

Traegert,

There are, but the jobs available pay like $1 or 2 a day

luciferofastora,

So glad slavery got abolished*!

*terms and conditions apply

FreakinSteve,

This is what conservatives wanted. This is what Democrats wanted. This is what capitalists wanted. America is a fucking authoritarian shithole. It has no concept at all what freedom is, and never has. All of that “freedom” shit is a bald faced fucking lie.

And now some asshole raised in some Appalachian shithole is gonna stomp in here and try to tell everyone that America is great because he served in Afghanistan and if you hate America move

ADTJ,

You think this is bad, we recently had a high profile case in the UK finally overturn a law where people who were found to have been wrongfully imprisoned had fees deducted from their compensation to pay the prison service for their food and accommodation.

Imagine spending years of your life in prison on a false conviction and then finding out you have to pay the government for the privilege.

FreakinSteve,

I am not surprised, as the UK is who taught the world the concept of ownership and financial enslavement. The US is the eager scion of such pedigree

funkless_eck,

hey, the uk has taught the world other things too

like how to make concentration camps

Olgratin_Magmatoe,

Don’t forget, the U.S. has had some fun lessons to teach others. Like there was that time when the U.S. taught Germany how to make gas chambers and use them on “lower races”.

hOmE oF ThE fReE

CCF_100,

What do they do if the incarcerated people are unable to pay the fee? Do they just let the debt add up? That’s awful…

LemmyKnowsBest,

Counties apparently sue people and employ wage garnishment to get back the money that majority of people obviously cannot pay back. For the rest of their lives until they commit suicide (or die naturally and peacefully with the sword of damocles hanging over their heads).

LemmyFeed,

Sounds like good incentive to not have a normal tax paying job and rather maintain under the table and/or illegal ways of making money.

Varyk,

That Rutgers article says that they literally take people with a debt to court, or they take money from your wages while you’re working, assuming of course that you can find a job after you get out.

ObsidianZed,

Lazy criminals just need to get a job.

/s

Cypher19,

How is this not considered cruel or unusual punishment?

JohnDClay,

Because it’s common not unusual?

LemmyKnowsBest,

It’s cruel but it’s not unusual.

LemmyFeed,

🎵 it’s not unusual… 🎵

LemmyKnowsBest,

… 🎵 to be loved by anyone 🎵

reverendsteveii,

not sure which ones, but at least one charges you per day for the length of your sentence even if you’re let out early

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