- cross-posted to:
- politics@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- politics@lemmy.world
Very weird that I am so old and have literally never heard this mentioned in a TV show or book or movie or anything.
In four out of five states, if you go to prison, you are literally paying for the time you spend there.
As you can guess, this results in crippling debt as soon as you’re released.
The county gets back a fraction of what they hold over your head the rest of your life until you commit suicide(or die naturally and peacefully with the sword of damocles hanging over your head).
$20-$80 a day according to Rutgers.
Counties apparently sue people and employ wage garnishment to get back the money that majority of people obviously cannot pay back.
https://www.rutgers.edu/news/states-unfairly-burdening-incarcerated-people-pay-stay-fees
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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.
It’s less than ten percent of federal prisons. Police unions (including correctional officers) have a greater impact.
I don’t remember prisons being mentioned in 1984. They just vaporized people and then acted like they never existed
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 sad and conspicuous that all of the reasons you hear about these days that would actually justify going out and killing terrible people mostly all involve things the American government has done or permitted. Truly the driving force for evil in the world.
They’re barely a 200-year-old country; relevant for roughly 80 of those years, the states are not the ultimate driving force of anything, and certainly not a vague concept like evil.
This specific issue is a failing on part of its citizenry, in company of many failings, but the country is not a static moment in time defined by its failings.
I thought last I heard about this that the bills for this weren’t usually called for payment unless you were suing them for something. Could be mistaken
It’s state dependant.
This article has a few Connecticut examples of the cruelty of the system and some background, from before Connecticut mostly abolished the pay to stay practice (thanks to democrats): https://apnews.com/article/crime-prisons-lawsuits-connecticut-074a8f643766e155df58d2c8fbc7214c
So apart from coercing inmates to do for profit work for pennies (other countries would call it slave labour), some inmates also get to pay for the privilege on top of that.
Here’s a more comprehensive article on how inmates and their families are being milked in the USA : https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/americas-dystopian-incarceration-system-pay-stay-behind-bars
Believe it or not if you can’t pay… straight to jail
And then if you can’t pay after you get out, they’ll sue you. I can’t find evidence that you’ll go back to jail, but I’m sure it’s happened.
Just to really fuck up your life when you get out
In particular, to force you back into crime, to be able to pay for that debt.
just declare bankruptcy
Absolutely, I mean I’m already a felon, what’s one more barrier to credit and gainful employment?
Bankruptcy isn’t a bad option if you don’t have any credit or have bad credit already. You can turn things around in a couple of months. Also I am unaware of employers performing a credit check as a basis for employment.
You’ve chosen your username well.
https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/finance/credit-score-employer-checking
Felonies also don’t help with getting a job. https://www.prisonpolicy.org/blog/2022/02/08/employment/
Bankruptcy, without a lawyer is not just a couple months. https://www.forbes.com/advisor/credit-score/bankruptcy-on-credit-report/
Also another place where credit can affect your chances is housing https://www.businessinsider.com/personal-finance/credit-score-needed-to-rent-apartment?op=1
And when it’s that bad you can just move into a relatives house right? https://www.repository.law.indiana.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=11290&context=ilj
Wait, are you unironically advocating for people not to declare bankruptcy after leaving prison with crippling debt?
I’m saying it shouldn’t be necessary in the first place. You’re supposed to have paid your debt to society by being in there. Federal amd state tax money pay for you to be there, charging room and board is predatory.
Just declare bankruptcy bro! Is a very tone deaf response to what is essentially bonded labor.
@Trollception @aodhsishaj they do if there’s a gov’t clearance or you’re touching corp money involved. But in most cases they’ll let you explain what happened.
Depends on the company. Background checks can include credit checks. Any job with money or security clearance will check credit and large employers sometimes do as well.
Common in IT roles as well.
Blows my mind, credit has nothing to do with IT skills?!
@aodhsishaj @metaStatic bankruptcy is by far not the worse thing you can do. Often trying to unbury yourself will take longer to get back to solvency.
We had to medical B out. Get cancer these days, particularly with a $6K+ deductible for a PPO and you’re toast. We managed to switch to a HMO before surgery and we were still toast. And I had a Good Job.
File, get a pre-paid card then some high-interest you barely use, then some “normal” credit and it builds faster than you know
If you think bankruptcy is bad, look at all the rich people and corps that do it as often as possible
Edit: I mean Herr Trumptard has filed no less than six times to avoid paying people
Did Donald file for personal bankruptcy or did a Donald business file for bankruptcy? It might be like stealing: legal and cool if you are a corporation and the victims are poors.
Corporations have more rights than the people, and rich people hide behind their companies. So, without looking it up, I’m guessing trump business.
Rich people never pay what they owe, especially if they owe it to the gov’t. Unlike poor people, the police doesn’t knock on their door to get the money.
This golden oldie, “all hail the job creators, creators of all jobs.”
Bankruptcy without a lawyer, a permanent address and transportation to the courts is a serious hurdle. People rotating out of prison are already at a disadvantage. My point is they shouldn’t be in debt when they leave prison in the first place. The whole point is that they paid their debt to society.
This isn’t, oh shit I’m in over my head in a cornerstore, restaurant, family warehouse, what have you. It’s very tone-deaf to not address the elephant in the room of these people entering society at a grave disadvantage.
The services below should not be necessary for every person incarcerated by the state. The system is broken.
https://legalbeagle.com/5666136-file-bankruptcy-prison.html
https://library.nclc.org/article/bankruptcys-role-alleviating-criminal-justice-debt-0
Debtor’s Prison is illegal… happens anyway
great solution
So felons can do that, but students can’t with crushing loans. Cool
cool and normal
I wish i knew why you were being downvoted but nobody offered a counter point. Bankrupcy seems like a logical solution for this situation.
I hope kbin never federates downvotes because I couldn’t care less
but it’s probably people who got scammed with student loans they can’t discharge with bankruptcy.
The system is working as intended
The US is starting to sound made up
I honeatly think that a lot.
It’s called the American Dream because you’ve got to be asleep to believe it
isn’t every country made up after all?
But this has begun sounding like made up details, like someone heard how we feel and they decided to play into those concerns to see how much we’d believe before calling them out.
It was. Everywhere was.
Yes, but the more I live and hear things about the states it starts to sound like satire or as if it’s a joke to see what other people will believe.
You’re just getting older, haha. The longer we live, the more we can’t help seeing what’s right in front of us.
Nah, it’s exactly the other way around. Except for a tiny minority. All the others have to ignore what’s around them in order to not go insane.
I can understand why it seems that way, but the broad American public support civil liberties, green energy, healthy and equitable policies in general; it’s the vocal minority that is subverting the will of the more fair-minded, rational and compassionate majority(sure would be nice if more than one out of every three or four people voted).
And I don’t even think most conservatives believe in the policies they support so much as they don’t comprehend what they’re supporting and they are afraid of relinquishing control over what they narrowly perceive as “power” and “freedom”.
The ones I’ve talked to don’t.
I feel like most of them only vote R because they’re getting bamboozled into believing that the Rs stand for conservative, Christian, family values.
Anecdotally, ignorance and fear seems to be significant factors supporting conservative beliefs.
When I tell a liberal something that they aren’t expecting or that they didn’t know, they’ll respond with “what? How do you know that? Really?”
Then with a conservative, I usually get “No, no. Really? Well, I don’t know about that, anyway…”
And that’ll be some hard truth or contradicting statistic that the conservative doesn’t want to address or learn about because it will fly in the face of a fear or ignorance based belief.
If only that were true for everyone.
I’d like to believe that. Social Media did a great job of reprogramming people.
Media did a great job before that, and humans tend to get conservative as they age, so I think there’s a lot of factors working together to make people more cynical than they ought to be.
It’s real and I’m here. Pls save me.
I’d love to invite you up north but we need to get some housing first.
We all have housing. It’s just a matter of prying the leeches off first.
As long as the leeches are still there then we really don’t.
Got any salt?
The finest.
WTB 1 salt. 5k /wave2 /glow:green
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.
It’s unfortunate you left… When good people leave, we’re stuck with more of the bad gaining power.
If we lose this country to the bad people even more than it’s already been lost, then the entire world may pay dearly as a result.
If he left a solid red or blue state, it doesn’t really matter. Our minority representation, first pst the pole voting and electoral college means that a lot of smart people from cities or solid blue areas can leave and nothing will change.
Plus OP’s an outlier, most of us can’t afford to relocate like this.
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.)
Do you have to struggle with the insane only work, no life, salary man/woman problems? Or did you find something that doesn’t follow that “life style?”
No, I see it but I don’t have to deal with it.
It’s also not as much of a constant as it used to be.
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.
Obligatory Incarceration in Real Numbers
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.)”
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.
There are, but the jobs available pay like $1 or 2 a day
So glad slavery got abolished*!
*terms and conditions apply
Not in the states. US prisons are exploitative first and punitive second.
In Utah, you get charged fees by the day if you’ve been charged and/or convicted of a misdemeanor. No charge if it’s a felony. They figure they’ll get their moneys worth if the inmate goes to work at Utah Corrections Industries.
Even if you’re just charged, or you have to be convicted and in prison?
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.
I am not surprised, as the UK is who taught the world the concept of ownership and financial enslavement. The US is the eager scion of such pedigree
hey, the uk has taught the world other things too
like how to make concentration camps
How is this not considered cruel or unusual punishment?
It’s cruel but it’s not unusual.
🎵 it’s not unusual… 🎵
… 🎵 to be loved by anyone 🎵
Because it’s common not unusual?
In Oz you get paid a small amount per day so you have some adjustment money when you get out
Oz is better.
Is the far right movement down there getting as bad as it is presented, or is that just the only thing newspapers talk about besides the wildfires?
Nah, we have what we call casual racism, but the real far right intense stuff is a vocal minority. I live in regional NSW and we have a growing immigrant population, largely from Asia and Africa. The colour difference between what was here 5 years ago and now is there if you care to look but honestly it is just people being people for the most part, nobody really seems to care. That said, our billionaires are a major issue and government capture seems inevitably unless major reform goes through.
Best of luck.
I was in and around Melbourne for a few months, and everyone I met seemed very cool, just people being people, so that’s good to hear.
Except, what shocked me over and over again as I traveled, was I always met someone who loved Trump.
Like I was staying with this hippie outside melbourne couchsurfing and he started talking about Trump and Q, and I had no idea what he was talking about at that point, and after I found out what conspiracy theories q was putting forth. I was so confused as to how this hippie wholeheartedly believed in things like pizzagate or the like.
I was so confused as to how this hippie wholeheartedly believed in things like pizzagate or the like.
Too much snoop smoke while browsing 4chan is my guess
The people writing these laws and the people paying them to write them are the ones who belong in prison.
