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
I read the wiki page. Pretty barebones, but it did link to https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-34705968
In theory, I could entertain an argument about having criminals repay some of the costs of dealing with them, that’s not what’s going on here.
The jail gets 30%, the company gets 70%.
It really just looks like just another way to exploit prisoners for profit.
Yeah, that’s what the Rutgers article at the bottom of my post was for, more context.
There is no doubt that the prisons are using pay for stay as an excuse to hoover up more money from the most vulnerable populations.