In increasing numbers, states struggling to balance their budgets post-Great Recession are passing their expanding prison budgets off onto their prisoners. Upon being released from jail or a juvenile detention facility, many former inmates find themselves facing bills for their room and board while incarcerated, plus legal and court fees and additional charges they may have incurred while behind bars.
Many former inmates come from the lowest socioeconomic levels. With limited or no resources and facing considerable obstacles toward just getting back on their feet after prison — not to mention paying these additional “user fees” — having to assume financial responsibility for one’s own incarceration and defense presents a de facto “second punishment” for the most vulnerable in the American prison system.
As reported originally by The Atlantic, Zoe Matthews is currently dealing with the imposition of this form of “capitalistic justice.” Matthews’ son, DeShawn Morris, was arrested in 2010 for armed robbery. Morris — a 17-year-old who was about to enter a teacher training program at the time — was identified by the victim as being involved in a robbery at gunpoint a few blocks away from the bus stop where Morris was apprehended. Charged with the crime, Morris served 56 days in juvenile detention and 152 days in a boot camp.
Morris was later charged a percentage of his incarceration costs. When he was shot and killed in 2012, Matthews was stuck with her son’s incarceration bill. If she fails to pay it, she risks incarceration.
Mounting fees
In Alameda County, Calif., where Morris was arrested, these costs can compound quickly. If a defendant is over 16, the charges begin once he or she is arrested and arraigned. A $20 per day user fee is charged if a defendant is remanded to a juvenile detention facility until his or her hearing. Should the judge feel the defendant should be allowed to wait at home, but still think the defendant is a flight risk, the judge can order him or her to wear a GPS tracker at $15 per day. If a formal complaint is filed, a $250 investigation fee is charged. Should the defendant wish to go to trial, a $300 public defender fee is charged. Depending on the sentence imposed, the defendant may be hit with additional GPS or juvenile detention fees, drug testing at $12 per test, or probation supervision at $90 per month. Finally, to seal the juvenile’s record, it costs $150.
This does not include court-imposed fines or restitution. In fees alone, the average juvenile offender can face a total bill close to $2,000 — an impossible sum for those living off of minimum wage.
“There are more and more criminal justice fees that are added every year in this country,” said Lauren-Brooke Eisen, a legal scholar at NYU’s Brennan Center for Justice. “In recent years, about 20 state legislatures passed laws holding parents responsible for their children’s crime.”
As government-owned debt, non-payment can result in pay garnishments, withholding of tax refunds, liens against personal property, and — in rare cases — imprisonment. Though the administrative processes to collect these fees and to punish non-payers cost more than the fees they collect, an increasing number of communities are finding logic in forcing prisoners to pay for their own punishment.
Picking on the down-trodden
Considering the nature of who is being imposed upon, however, helps to bring focus to the true cost of this tactic. Per a 2010 report from the Brennan Center for Justice, of the 15 states with the highest prison populations — Alabama, Arizona, California, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Louisiana, Michigan, Missouri, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas and Virginia — all 15 impose user fees on released inmates.
Reportedly, 80 to 90 percent of those charged with a criminal offense in these states qualify for state-paid defense. Approximately 65 percent did not finish high school, while 70 percent register at the lowest literacy levels. Additionally, 28 percent of those arrested and 40 percent of those imprisoned are black, and a black defendant is five times more likely to need state-paid defense than a white defendant.
This is creating a situation in which the poor are being saddled with additional debt, perpetuating the cycle of poverty at the comfort of the state. Florida, for example, has more “user fees” than any other state and has removed all exemptions and relief mechanisms for those incapable of paying, but the state only expects that 9 percent of all levied fees will be paid. However, as Florida counts on these “user fees” not only to underwrite the state’s criminal justice center, but also to help pay for some of the state’s general functions, the state takes an aggressive posture in collections — imposing late fees, suspending driver’s licenses, and in some judicial districts, forcing non-payers to appear in court to explain missed payments and incarcerating those who fail to appear.
Questions of morality
As “user fees” usually do not cover the costs of incarceration — and may even exacerbate it — one must question the ethics of knowingly indebting a person as a measure of punishment. In practical terms, the system is creating a financial yoke of responsibility that will continue or expand the suffering that those at the bottom of the economic food chain must endure, which will encourage more crime. The concept also defeats the notion that an offender cannot be punished for the same crime twice — under this system of financial punishment, the convicted and their families may be forced to live the rest of their lives in an “economic prison.”
“That’s supposed to rehabilitate you, and you’re paying your debt back to society,” said Matthews, a single mother of three who is now facing wage garnishment for non-payment of her late son’s prison debt, “so then they’re going to charge you an additional per night stay? As if you elected to do that, as if there were some options?
“No, I don’t think that’s right at all.”