LIFE IN PRISON PAY NOW, PAY LATER
Parenti, Christian
LIFE IN PRISON Pay Now, Pay Later BY CHRISTIAN PARENTI Kenneth Stewart Sr. is distressed. His son, Kenny, is on Virginia's death row and owes the state $57,756.20 for the cost of his jury...
...Between 1989 and 1% the Mobile County jail saw its inmate population double while its total medical expenses dropped from $883,000 to $262,000...
...Taxpayers like tip idea that we don't allow prisoners to profit from their crimes," says Attorney General Frank Kelley...
...In Nevada, inmates, upon sentencing, are forced to disclose personal assets and to agree to pay a portion of the cost of their incarceration...
...Even deadly contagious diseases such as HIV and tuberculosis often start out as a rash or a cough...
...At first it seems to be a rational cost-cutting policy," says Jenni Gainsborough of the ACLU's National Prison Project...
...These small (but, for prisoners, nonetheless expensive) fees are usually introduced with the stated aim of "deterring frivolous health complaints...
...Despite his enthusiasm for the prison industries, Skolnik acknowledges that "it defrays some costs, but not much...
...Not surprisingly, the average number of monthly doctor visits plunged from 1,125 to 225...
...Prisons extract money Christian Parenti, a student at the London School of Economics, has written about prison labor for The Nation...
...According to an ACLU National Prison Project survey, twenty-one of the nation's state prison systems require at least some inmates to make payments toward room and board...
...Relying on a previously dormant, sixty-year-old law known as the Prisoners Reimbursement Act, the Michigan attorney general's office has launched an aggressive campaign of lawsuits against inmates it deems able to pay the $40-a-day cost of their incarceration...
...And, in a perfect reflection of the dual economy in the United States, another thirty inmates build stretch limousines for Emerald Coach...
...If they get shrimp, you're screwed," says Baugh...
...In Washington state, a company called Exmark uses a "flexible" pool of prison laborers to package everything from Microsoft Windows 95 to Starbucks Coffee products, JanSport gear, and literature for telecommunications giant US WEST, according to an article in The Stranger...
...But other states have overcome numerous legal challenges...
...So far, these Pennsylvania peonage policies have survived all legal challenges in circuit courts...
...That, of course, means years without soap, socks, cigarettes, or stationery...
...Last year, the Department of Corrections was authorized to take "10 percent of any wages, salary, benefits, or payments from any source...
...Complicating matters are Kenny Stewart's abscessing teeth...
...And the most bizarre charge of all, as Stewart's lawyer David Baugh points out, is the "jury lunch fee...
...In April 1994, the warden of Berks County prison in Pennsylvania began charging his prisoners for room and board...
...today the total is $295,000...
...They charge fifty bucks to pull teeth, and Kenny needs most of his taken out," says the senior Stewart, who receives $850 a month in social security and wages as a part-time security guard...
...If they get beanie weenies, you get a break...
...In Louisiana, Corrections Corporation of America—the largest private prison operator in the country, with, according to The Washington Post, profits of $4 million in 1993—has teamed up with the work-clothes manufacturer Company Apparel Safety Items (CASI...
...Louise Grable contended that the state was unfair when it took 90 percent of her sixty-three-year-old, incarcerated husband's $398 monthly General Motors pension...
...The latter of these laws made transportation of prison-manufactured products across state lines a felony...
...Last year, Lancaster County jail joined the fray and started charging prisoners $10 a day for room and board...
...Between 1994 and 1995, 675 cases were forwarded to Capax...
...Stewart and the 1,684 other Virginia, prisoners who are paying the costs of their trials are, upon their defeat in court, slapped with an itemized bill that includes these standard charges: $100 forensics fee, $200 sentencing fee, $2 courthouse-maintenance fee, $65 court-reporter's fee, $12 sheriffs fee, $32.50 clerk's fee, $265 felony fee...
...And every year the Departme|| of Corrections collects up to $1 millionflj rent from prisoners in halfway houses an prison work camps...
...Berks County prison now charges $10 per day, or 25 percent of costs...
...But eventually prison administrators will be faced with widespread health crises...
...This arcane Virginia law, recently resurrected by get-tough legislators, is coming under increasing legal pressure...
...In purely financial terms, attempts to make prisons self-sufficient will, and do, fail...
...Restore cars for Imperial Palace (thirty to forty inmates employed...
...Nevada prisoners already do the following: • Build Bentley Nevada circuit boards for nuclear power plants (thirteen to fifteen inmates employed...
...Howard Skolnik, assistant director of the Nevada Department of Prisons, says: "The only thing stopping our expansion is that we've used all available space...
...The Orleans Parish jail in Louisiana had been charging $3 to $5 for over-the-counter medication but this practice was likewise enjoined...
...The court threw out Johnson's case, holding that the inmate's inability to pay for the medication necessary for him to breathe freely was not cruel and unusual punishment...
...says Louise Grable...
...The minimum cost to a losing defendant is $720 for the first day of trial...
...A bill in the California state assembly seeks to charge inmates $15 a day for room and board...
...To help recoup a small portion of booming prison-construction costs, and to throw a bone to a vengeful public, many states enforce a pay-to-stay policy for inmates...
...Increasingly, individual wardens and county sheriffs are devising such programs on their own, without approval from state governments...
...Nevada provides a glimpse of what may lie ahead on the road to self-sufficient prisons...
...Florida charges $3 a visit...
...Such jobs pay between fifty cents and $4.25 an hour, with between 25 and 50 percent of the inmate's wages going toward room and board...
...Prison activists and critics of medical co-payments point to the long-term irrationality of such policies...
...His son, Kenny, is on Virginia's death row and owes the state $57,756.20 for the cost of his jury trial—not his defense, but his whole trial...
...In Arizona, the press reports that even the 109 residents of death row are now pulling their own weight on a prison-run vegetable farm...
...No other state charges for criminal jury trials, though the National Center for State Courts reports that twenty-six states charge court fees in civil cases...
...By mid-1995, other prisons in Pennsylvania were following suit...
...Congress established the Justice Department's Prison Industries Enhancement (PIE) program...
...That fund is the repository of all prison canteen profits and is intended to be used for recreation and entertainment, such as buying basketballs, weights, and common-area televisions...
...Colorado state prisons had charged $3 per visit, but the practice was found unconstitutional and amended...
...At first just a small-scale collection of pilot programs, PIE now licenses more than fifty "projects...
...This lien on prisoners' assets and wages applies not only while a person is incarcerated but for "five years from the date that the offender is released...
...Lancaster's policy even goes so far as to charge former inmates for pre-sentencing time...
...the prisoner's welfare fund is charged...
...One of the positive side-effects of employing the condemned—as far as the governor's press secretary is concerned—is that the inmates will now be too busy to file "frivolous lawsuits in attempts to circumvent their death sentences...
...In October 1995, Allen County, Kentucky, started charging $10 for a doctor's visit...
...The Missouri law will make failure to pay one's incarceration-related debts a violation of parole...
...One particularly harrowing incident occurred in Comanche County, Oklahoma, where a jail simply refused to pay for a pretrial inmate's cancer treatments...
...Davis also points out that former prisoners already pay for prisons—as does everyone else—with taxes...
...who is sixty-two...
...Many states, most notably California, operate private prison-labor programs outside of PIE legislation and set their own rules for how firms can use prison labor...
...In some cases, the prisons are even pursuing former prisoners for the cost of their incarceration...
...In Virginia, a jury trial is still a right, but one that losing defendants must literally pay for...
...On average, Nevada collects $800,000 to $1 million a year in room and board...
...Michigan has one of the more established pay-to-stay programs...
...C.P...
...If something like tuberculosis is not treated promptly—especially in a prison— epidemics are inevitable...
...Last week I sent $50 up to Kenny's account and there wasn't but six cents left in it after the authorities took their share," Stewart says...
...In Maryland, Prison Legal News reports, a prisoner named Jerome Johnson, who earned eighty-five cents a day and suffered from severe asthma, challenged the state's right to charge $4 to $10 for doctor visits and inhalers...
...Kenny Stewart's predicament is emblematic of a trend in American prisons to shift the costs of incarceration onto prisoners...
...Make waterbeds for Vinyl Products (sixty-five inmates employed...
...Other Nevada operations include making mattresses and fitting out ambulances for state government use...
...The main effect of squeezing funds from prisoners is to justify the gargantuan costs of America's gulag, which grows larger every day.* The ultimate in prison self-sufficiency is the prison as factory...
...California $5 (soon to be boosted to $10), plus up to $200 for dentures and over $60 for eyeglasses...
...In 1994 the state collected $400,00| from prison inmates' bank accounts ai# pensions...
...This practice had been outlawed by New Deal legislation—the Hawes-Cooper Act and the Ashurst-Sumnor Act...
...Often the rule applies only to inmates employed in prison industries or by private firms that use prison labor...
...Nevada prisoners who work pay from 20 to 50 percent of their wages for room and board...
...But not everyone agrees...
...On top of the $50 "co-payments" for medieval-style dental extractions, Kenny—like prisoners throughout the nation—must buy his own toiletries, underwear, socks, cigarettes, and stationery...
...Instead, "the prisoner's account goes into negative balance," and if someone is ultimately unable to pay...
...No one is actually denied treatment due to lack of funds," says Whorton of the Nevada Department of Prisons...
...One of the most inhumane policy innovations sweeping the corrections establishment is the introduction of co-payments for medical care, dental work, and mental-health services...
...Nevadl' $4, with the costs of medication and p{jj§ thetics running much higher...
...When former inmates fail to pay, their cases are referred to Capax Credit Control...
...Mental-health services and emergency procedures can also drain a prisoner's account...
...Upon release from Berks County prison, former inmates have thirty days to set up a payment plan for their outstanding debts...
...After a lengthy court case, she managed to have the pension deductions reduced...
...In Virginia, the accounting of justice is a picayune affair...
...Under PIE it again became legal for private corporations to employ prison labor...
...Just because we're the only one that does it doesn't mean it's wrong," said spokesperson Mark Miner in a recent news report...
...If a prisoner incurred a few large expenses at the beginning of incarceration, "a guy could be stuck without any money for his whole stay," says Glen Whorton of the Nevada Department of Prisons...
...Baugh and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) are planning to sue, arguing that charging for a jury trial violates the Constitution's Sixth Amendment (the right to a jury trial) and Fourteenth Amendment (equal protection under the law...
...In the first six months, the prison collected $85,000 from 2,000 inmates...
...As in other Pennsylvania institutions former inmates of Lancaster are given thirty days to pay their debts, after which their case is handed to a private collection agency...
...Hand-assemble Shelby Cobra road cars (fifteen inmates employed...
...Now prisoners are charged only for a second opinion...
...California, Nevada, Oregon, and Washington lead the nation in leasing prison labor to private firms, as states are moving toward a partnership with private industry...
...Prisoners will also start paying for doctor visits and will soon face a "utility tax" on TVs, radios, and the other electrical appliances they use in their cells...
...Due to the notoriously bad prison food, most prisoners are forced to supplement the official diet with the occasional can of tuna fish or soup mix from the commissary...
...After that the cost drops to $360 per day, or $30 per juror...
...Throughout the country, state corrections departments are squeezing whatever funds possible from the 1.5 million incarcerated Americans...
...As part of the 1979 Justice Improvement Act...
...Hey, stay out of jail," says Whorton...
...However, many states and counties are beginning to charge regardless of a prisoner's ability to pay...
...He's currently serving three to sixteen years for sexually molesting a young girl, and he left his wife with no income other than the pension...
...I know what my husband did was wrong and he's paying for it, but I don't think that it's right for the state to walk right in and take everything...
...Last year, Virginia collected $36 million in court fees—and that was for trial costs, not fines...
...from their inmates by charging for court costs, imposing medical co-payments, seizing prisoners' assets, garnishing prisoners" wages, and pursuing former prisoners for the cost of their incarceration...
...A similar practice holds true in many other states: Indigent inmates with no cash will have their accounts debited for medical costs and thus will be without any spending money until all debts are paid...
...This was the stated aim of Chief Justice Warren Burger, who in the 1970s urged Congress to turn prisons into "factories with fences...
...This is the first partnership between one of the nation's eighty-eight private prisons and a private manufacturer...
...Michigan passed a similar law that will now charge up to $60 a day for room and board in county jails...
...Prisoners are drawn from the poorest sections of the population and even if they are gouged for every penny in prison and hounded for all of their postrelease lives by the debts of incarceration, they will never cough up enough money to pay for the overpriced, high-tech island of concrete in which they are kept...
...In what passes for mercy among Missouri legislators, the law states: "Not more than 90 percent of the value of the assets of the offender may be used for the purposes of securing costs and reimbursement...
...Every month he sends $200 to his son Kenny's prison account in the hopes that Kenny's teeth will be worked on...
...But with a $57,000 debt around his neck, and a mouth full of dental bills, Kenny Stewart goes without the basics as he awaits execution...
...Nonetheless, the Virginia attorney general's office defends its position...
...In 1994...
...Oklahoma $2, plus $2 per prescription...
...The twenty-eight prisoners employed by CASI receive the minimum wage minus a 30 percent deduction for their room and board...
...The same story emerges throughout the nation, from the San Diego County jail to numerous state prison systems...
...Only after the prisoner filed a federal lawsuit were the treatments allowed...
...According to a 1994 report in Corrections Forum magazine, a similar co-payment program in Mobile, Alabama, showed a 50 percent reduction in inmate visits to the clinic...
...From small county jails to maximum-security state penitentiaries, inmates are being forced to pay room and board while they're locked away...
...In a recent letter to The Progressive, prisoner Ricky Davis argued that the law will merely "ensure that re-entry into society is even more difficult for ex-cons" and that the wage attachments will lead to further poverty and thus more crime and recidivism...
...It won't be a free ride any more," said Warden Vincent Guarini...
...In Missouri, post-prison peonage is now state law...
Vol. 60 • July 1996 • No. 7
