514
TIL 40 states in the US charge you $20-$80 a day for being incarcerated in prison.
(en.m.wikipedia.org)
Just to really fuck up your life when you get out
this post was submitted on 02 May 2024
514 points (97.9% liked)
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In particular, to force you back into crime, to be able to pay for that debt.
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The system is working as intended
The US is starting to sound made up
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.
Where did you go, if you don't mind me asking? It's certainly something we've talked about...
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.)
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Isn't the US famous for their prison for profit, where prisons are privately owned and states need to pay if there are fewer incarcerated people inside?
To me, this sounds straight from 1984.
Yeah, the states is the most country with for-profit prisons, and not coincidentally incarcerates the 6th highest percentage of its population of any country, just about half a percent of the total population at any time, or somewhere under 2 million people.
But boy howdy, do those percentages change when you control for economic class and ethnicity.
It's less than ten percent of federal prisons. Police unions (including correctional officers) have a greater impact.
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This is some serious "keep hitting yourself" material. It's not like you can decide to not be incarcerated. $7300-$29200 of debt per year spent in prison. Man, that is some vicious shit. Nobody will be able to convince me that this is not specifically designed to keep people down forever.
Exactly. Recidivism makes a lot more sense now.
Imagine if you had $30,000 of debt right after you get out of jail with zero contacts and social support.
Yeah of course you're going to go back to what you were doing before, you have no other options that you're aware of.
Fuck that system.
You also have a record which makes getting hired even more difficult.
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It would be nice if the prisoners could take class or earn a degree while in prison, at least when they get out they have a new skill or a degree so they have a better chance to get a job to pay off their prison debt.
In Finland low risk prisoners can even get (or keep) a job. They drive a loaner car from the prison to their job in the morning and then drive back to prison in the afternoon.
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It's actually worse than that... I went looking for a list, I found this:
https://www.vox.com/2015/5/26/8660001/prison-jail-cost
"Forty-three states allow inmates to get charged for "room and board" — the cost of their own imprisonment. Thirty-five states charge inmates for at least some medical expenses. Taken together, at least 49 states have a law on the books that authorizes at least one of the two. (Hawaii, as well as DC, doesn't have statutes that explicitly address pay-to-stay.)"
That's the beauty of both ruling parties being 100% in support of the prison industrial complex. In fact, our current president even helped usher through the '94 Crime Bill, which keeps prisons nice and full for his golf buddies and institutional donors.
Remember, though, that people, opinions, and political landscapes can change. Yes, Biden was pretty shit back in the 90s, but it actually feels a little bit like he's trying to move back in the other direction. Don't gotta forget the bad, but also can't forget the (attempts at) good
Right it's important to remember 94 was literally 30 years ago. Attitudes can change significantly in that time.
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I just heard about that for the first time a few days ago, and I couldn't believe it was real. As horrible as I think the United States of Ferenginar is, they always manage to surprise me and be worse.
I have to keep asking people not to compare American Capitalists to the Ferengi
The Ferengi have a rule book dictating the ways they are and aren't allowed to rip you off, American Capitalists would call that level of honesty and integrity Far-Left Socialism
The Ferengi are also perfectly happy to break any and all of the rules if it means more profit - that's probably one of the rules.
Most of the rules have a counter, opposite rule. IE, war is good for business, peace is good for business.
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Privatized prisons are an abomination.
The people writing these laws and the people paying them to write them are the ones who belong in prison.
I have a friend who was in. Outrageously expensive! Paid 'rent', paid for various classes he was required to take, and paid for each mandatory random drig test. Plus, what they have to pay for phone calls is crazy!!
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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
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.
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rationales justifying these fees routinely do not recognize them as a form of punishment and instead policymakers see pay-to-stay as financial reimbursement to the state by portraying incarcerated people as using up system resources. The justification allows pay-to-stay statutes to survive legal arguments alleging double punishment.
Shouldve shopped around for a prison within your means
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.
Not in the states. US prisons are exploitative first and punitive second.
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I read the wiki page. Pretty barebones, but it did link to https://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.
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How to absolutely destroy your net worth:
Step 1: go to prison
There is no step 2.
On release: "you've paid your debt to society, now pay your debt to the prison!"
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.
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The US is in free fall. Kinda crazy to see how passive the people are there.
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.
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In Oz you get paid a small amount per day so you have some adjustment money when you get out
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