County brings in record amount for jail ‘pay-to-stay’

The Athens County Prosecutor's Office has collected $23,927 in jail restitution for this past month from jail inmates, county Prosecutor Keller Blackburn announced in a news release Tuesday.

This amount has been enforced by the Prosecutor's Office and will be paid into the Athens County General Fund, the release said, adding that "this is the largest one-month total collected," surpassing even the amount collected all last year, $20,739.

Athens County is contracted to pay the Southeastern Ohio Regional Jail, Nelsonville, for 76 beds at an annual cost of $1,414,740. It costs $18,615 to house an inmate at the jail for one year (which works out to $51 a day), according to the news release.

The release stated that Blackburn "has made it a priority to hold defendants accountable for their actions and to reduce the burden on the public treasury by ordering defendants to pay for their own incarceration."

On Tuesday, however, Blackburn clarified his wording to note that Athens County's "pay-to-stay" requirement at the regional jail only applies to "convicted felons," not "defendants," as stated in the news release. That wording may have been used because pay-to-stay requirements in Athens County are often set during plea negotiations, when the defendant isn't yet technically convicted.

Blackburn also explained that the policy is applied on a case-by-case basis, either during the plea negotiations or sentencing. Sometime, he added, the court will decide against requiring pay-to-stay because of a soon-to-be inmate's indigent status. He also stressed that in any case involving victim restitution, that comes first before making an inmate pay for his or her incarceration. "First things first," he said. "We want to make sure victims get restitution."

Since Blackburn was sworn in as prosecutor, as the numbers suggest, the county has seen a large increase in jail days paid by defendants.

INCREASINGLY POPULAR "pay-to-stay" requirements at jails and prisons across the country have raised opposition from prison reform and prisoner advocacy groups. A post on the "Real Cost of Prisons" blog summarized the arguments against forcing inmates to pay for their incarceration: "Prison rights groups underscore that it's the relatives of the inmates that end up shouldering this high financial burden. These families – often disproportionately women – are typically already impoverished and struggling to make ends meet. Critics of the pay-to-stay system argue that in essence the government is seizing the assets of some of the poorest families in the country."

A 2009 article in the Christian Science Monitor quoted the wife of an inmate at the Martin County Correctional Institute in Florida, criticizing not only pay-to-stay policies but increases in charges for a variety of necessities in jail. "It's like we're a private ATM for the corrections department, and they know there's nothing we can do about it," she said.

According to the Cost of Prisons Blog, "prison rights advocates also point out that these fees make it more difficult for prisoners to reintegrate into society once they are free."

In the Christian Science Monitor article, a prosecuting attorney in Taney County, Florida, defended pay-to-stay and other policies that require inmates to help pay for their incarceration.

"It doesn't make sense that our citizens should have to pay for the irresponsible behavior of others in these tough economic times," Prosecutor Jeffrey Merrell told the newspaper. "It just makes good common sense to require those serving time in the jail to pay for the time and services spent. Although we may not be able to recoup every dollar spent to house all of our inmates, every dollar that can be collected provides some bit of relief for the taxpayers."

In the same article, a sheriff's spokesman, deputy Tom Erickson, in Johnson County, Kansas, said his county rejected the jail fees. "We looked at a pay-to-stay charge but there were a couple of issues," he told the Christian Science Monitor, first citing the cost of administering such a program.

"Then if somebody doesn't pay, what do you do? Do you issue a warrant for them, have them arrested again, put them back in jail? You've created a debtors' prison, and that's neither wanted nor needed. For us, it wasn't the right thing to do," Erickson said.