HARD TIME VIRGINIA Vol. 9, No. 1
An occasional newsletter by and for incarcerated persons in Virginia. Harvey Yoder, editor
Jail Cost Shifting Creates Financial Crisis for the Poor - Kevin Drexel
It is a misnomer to believe the public covers all the costs of incarceration and operations of jails. Jails shift the cost burdens of operations onto inmates and their families through excessive fees charged to inmates and through inflated private contracts with private vendors who provide food, clothing, and communications.
Vendors will offer kickbacks (“bribes”) to get county administrators to sign up. The Virginia Interfaith Center for Public Policy released a hard-hitting video on the matter. A must see.
These costs — rent, food, communications, hygiene, and clothing — are passed on to families trying to assist loved ones with basic material and emotional needs while incarcerated. Many of these families end up in debt and in financial distress. Excessive Fees disproportionately harm low-income families as the median annual income of a person incarcerated hovers around $19,000.
Hadar Aviram, a professor at the University of California, Hastings College of the Law, comments that “Public prisons are public only by name. These days, you pay for everything in prison.”
A Growing Practice
“There are an estimated 10 million people who owe more than $50 billion resulting from their involvement in the criminal justice system… In the last few decades, fees have proliferated, such as charges for police transport, case filing, felony surcharges, electronic monitoring, drug testing, and sex offender registration.”
Fees versus Fines
“Fees are not the same as fines. Fines are intended to serve as punishment, whereas fees and surcharges are explicitly designed to raise revenue for the government. But both fines and fees bring governments revenue as if they were taxes, and this method of funding government inflicts considerable harm on already impoverished communities” according to the Vera Institute in their 2021 report “The High Price of Using Justice Fines and Fees to Fund Government in Virginia.”
Let’s look at one of the most egregious fees – “Keep Fees”.
Keep Fees or Daily Rent
Keep Fees are the daily rent jails across the country charge inmates while incarcerated and can run from $3 per day to as high as $60 per day in some parts of the country. In Eaton County Michigan, the jail bills you $32 per day. The reality is Keep Fees vary by state in terms of the maximum allowed to be charged and vary within the states by county in terms of practice on how high they bump up to the maximum.
The Eighth Amendment and Link to Slavery
Some legal experts argue that these keep fees violate the Eighth Amendment constitutional protection against excessive fines. In a 9-0 U.S. Supreme Court decision, Clarence Thomas noted that excessive fines were used after the civil war to re-enslave freed men.
In a New York Times article titled “Slavery gave America a fear of black people and a taste for violent punishment. Both still define our criminal-justice system,” the author notes that we cannot understand excessive punishment that permeates the U.S. mass incarceration system without understanding its roots in the legacy of slavery.
Kevin recently spent 30 days in a Virginia jail, and posted this on his new Stand4Count website.
Work Court: A Proposed Alternative To Incarceration - Harvey Yoder
One of the more obvious signs of good citizenship is individuals holding down a good job, showing up regularly for work, providing for their families, keeping up with their bills, paying their taxes, and otherwise helping the economy and avoiding being a burden to society. The current unemployment rate in Virginia, at 3%, represents adults of working age who are less likely to be contributing to their communities in these ways.
Sadly, among those in the latter group are the more than 60,000 men and women in the Commonwealth confined in our jails and prisons. So as a concerned tax paying citizen I would offer the following modest proposal:
That anyone charged with an offense who has a steady job, is paying taxes and providing for themselves and for their families will not receive sentences that result in their losing their employment unless they are a clear danger to their community. Alternatives to incarceration could include paying appropriate fines, being under house arrest except for work, having an extended probation period, being on electronic monitoring, and/or serving time at night and on weekends.
I recently became acquainted with a local breadwinner who was within months of completing his probation when he was given an 18 month sentence for a probation violation. During the five years since completing his prison term he had kept a good paying job, paid off all his court fines and fees, gotten married, bought a home, bettered himself financially and remained law-abiding and infraction free. Then he made the bad mistake of violating one of the terms of his probation, which is a "technical violation" but not something that would be considered a crime for anyone not under court supervision.
This individual acknowledges his mistake and was prepared to accept some kind of consequence, but due to what he felt was poor representation by his court appointed attorney, was sentenced to serve another year and a half sentence in prison, losing his job and putting his spouse in financial straits in the process.
One of our community's more creative and effective alternatives to incarceration has been the local Drug Court initiated and championed by Commonwealth's Attorney Marsha Garst. Rather than having those with substance use disorders serving time behind bars at an average annual cost to taxpayers of over $25,000 per inmate, individuals in the Drug Court program are subject to regular drug screens, are enrolled in substance abuse programs, and meet with Judge Bruce Albertson for a check-in every Thursday noon at the Circuit Court. They are closely monitored and are regularly encouraged, promoted to a higher level, reprimanded, demoted, and/or graduated. If they relapse, they must start the program all over again.
So I'm wondering if a similar kind of "Work Court" program (perhaps meeting at night) could be created as an effective and corrective alternative to jail or prison time. In my mind this could be a win/win/win for 1) taxpayers, 2) our overcrowded jails and 3) all of the individuals, families and communities involved.
Needlessly warehousing working people in cages hurts families, adds to human services costs, reduces tax revenues, has a negative effect on our economy, and creates an added strain on local and state budgets.
We can do better than that.
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Harvey Yoder is chair of the Valley Justice Coalition, P.O. Box 434, Harrisonburg, VA 22803
