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FrodosPet

(5,169 posts) Sun Feb 9, 2014, 01:37 PM Feb 2014

Paying to stay in jail?

In LBN is a story about a jail in Nevada which is planning on charging prisoners.

Naturally, people are upset. Greedy Americans - surely the much more civilized Europeans would never do something like charging prisoners for their incarceration, and even the police investigations which got them there.

Hold that thought...

http://rt.com/news/dutch-prisoners-pay-jail-580/

Convicted criminals in Netherlands might start paying 16 euro ($22) per day for accommodation as the Dutch Ministry of Security and Justice wants to introduce a bill aimed at reducing state jail costs.

“Convicted criminals have broken the law and received a penalty. Offenders are being asked to make a contribution… because of high costs,” the ministry said in a statement Monday.

Under the proposal, the convicts may have to pay 16 euro per day for a maximum of two years for time spent behind bars. Parents of under-aged prisoners would also be liable for the charge. The convicted would be given six weeks to pay, adds the statement.

~ snip ~

Netherlands is not the first country around the world to introduce the bill of this kind. According to the ministry, a number of European countries make criminals repay part of the cost of investigations; also Denmark and Germany charge them to stay in prison.

3 replies

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Paying to stay in jail? (Original Post) FrodosPet Feb 2014 OP

At those prices I wouldn't expect turn down service and a mint on my pillow Major Nikon Feb 2014 #1

At first I thought yes, but after further thought, it would also create hardship for the innocent libdem4life Feb 2014 #2

Corporate Democrats and Republicans are aggressively growing private prisons. woo me with science Feb 2014 #3

Major Nikon

(36,827 posts)

1. At those prices I wouldn't expect turn down service and a mint on my pillow

Reply to FrodosPet (Original post)

Sun Feb 9, 2014, 01:42 PM

Feb 2014

libdem4life

(13,877 posts)

2. At first I thought yes, but after further thought, it would also create hardship for the innocent

Reply to FrodosPet (Original post)

Sun Feb 9, 2014, 01:54 PM

Feb 2014

family. If someone is unemployed without income...which often produces burglary, for instance...who pays? The innocent family. If they have a SS check the family is depending on, ($500 a month charges..in some places that is the family's rent) that would likely ruin credit, send more into the homeless/poverty range, thus enabling more crime. Maybe they should start vigorously enforcing the felonies and less time on victimless crimes. I have no problem with prisoners working programs...that should be the income. Not penalize the family.

Busting a kid for pot, keeping the increasingly private prisons full, and making the parents pay? Draconian. Save the incarceration costs and put them in rehab. Stop building prisons. There's a savings. Provide counseling in prison, not brutality, and reduce the recidivism that keeps them coming back.

Lots of things, but the massive prison lobby ... private or government ... isn't going to change and feeding them more money...they should share their profits with the state. Guards get paid 6 figure salaries. Lord knows what administrators get paid. And the profit in building these massive metal/concrete fortresses is off the charts.

woo me with science

(32,139 posts)

3. Corporate Democrats and Republicans are aggressively growing private prisons.

Reply to FrodosPet (Original post)

Sun Feb 9, 2014, 01:55 PM

Feb 2014

that benefit from this type of exploitation. It should surprise no one to see jails adopting a profit model, too. The growth of this outrage is aggressively supported by both Republicans and the corporate Third Way, for one simple reason: Imprisoning human beings is a profitable industry. But a government's complicity in attaching a profit motive to the imprisonment of human beings is nothing short of evil.

Poor minorities are worthless to corporations on the street. In prison they can bring in $40,000/yr
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10023368969

Government guarantees 90% occupancy rate in private prisons.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=2569173

The Obama administration is aggressively growing private prisons
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10022568681

Obama's 2013 budget: One area of marked growth, the prison industrial complex
http://sync.democraticunderground.com/1002392306

Obama selects the owner of a private prison consulting firm as the new Director of the United States Marshals Service (USMS)
http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2010/12/mars-d03.htmlPoor Land in Jail as Companies Add Huge Fees for Probation
http://www.democraticunderground.com/1014158005

Private prison corporations move up on list on federal contractors, receiving BILLIONS
http://www.nationofchange.org/president-obama-s-incarcernation-1335274655

The Caging of America - Why do we lock up so many people
http://www.democraticunderground.com/1002226110

Prison Labor Booms As Unemployment Remains High; Companies Reap Benefits
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/10/prison-labor_n_2272036.html

Private Prison Corporation's Letters to Shareholders Reveal Industry's Tactics: Profiting from Human Incarceration
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10022665091

Financial growth of private prison industry...Profiting from caging humans.

http://l.yimg.com/bt/api/res/1.2/BshteP8i282pcaeH8pdUsA--/YXBwaWQ9eW5ld3M7cT04NTt3PTUyMA--/

This Is How Private Prison Companies Make Millions Even When Crime Rates Fall
http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2013/09/private-prisons-occupancy-quota-cca-crime

This Is How Private Prison Companies Make Millions Even When Crime Rates Fall

—By Andy Kroll
| Thu Sep. 19, 2013 9:43 AM PDT MotherJones

We are living in boom times for the private prison industry. The Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), the nation's largest owner of private prisons, has seen its revenue climb by more than 500 percent in the last two decades. And CCA wants to get much, much bigger: Last year, the company made an offer to 48 governors to buy and operate their state-funded prisons. But what made CCA's pitch to those governors so audacious and shocking was that it included a so-called occupancy requirement, a clause demanding the state keep those newly privatized prisons at least 90 percent full at all times, regardless of whether crime was rising or falling.

Occupancy requirements, as it turns out, are common practice within the private prison industry. A new report by In the Public Interest, an anti-privatization group, reviewed 62 contracts for private prisons operating around the country at the local and state level. In the Public Interest found that 41 of those contracts included occupancy requirements mandating that local or state government keep those facilities between 80 and 100 percent full. In other words, whether crime is rising or falling, the state must keep those beds full. (The report was funded by grants from the Open Society Institute and Public Welfare, according to a spokesman.)

All the big private prison companies—CCA, GEO Group, and the Management and Training Corporation—try to include occupancy requirements in their contracts, according to the report. States with the highest occupancy requirements include Arizona (three prison contracts with 100 percent occupancy guarantees), Oklahoma (three contracts with 98 percent occupancy guarantees), and Virginia (one contract with a 95 percent occupancy guarantee). At the same time, private prison companies have supported and helped write "three-strike" and "truth-in-sentencing" laws that drive up prison populations. Their livelihoods depend on towns, cities, and states sending more people to prison and keeping them there.

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