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A Massachusetts court this week ordered a local sheriff to repay more than $750,000 he had collected from prisoners by charging them for their stays in county jail — along with their haircuts, medical exams and eyeglasses. Nothing like a captive customer base. Too bad it was against the law.<\/p>\n
Starting in 2002, the sheriff of Bristol County started charging fees to prisoners in the county jail, calling it a “fiscal responsibility program.” In the eight years since, he has faced criticism for the program — and collected three-quarters of a million dollars.<\/p>\n
A group of prisoners sued the sheriff, and the court ruled Monday that he didn’t have the power under state law to adopt a fee structure, and ordered him to return the money.<\/p>\n
Court fees have been imposed on convicted defendants for years, and though they’re sometimes controversial they seem pretty well ingrained in legal practice. The new territory of jail fees, however, cross the line. They charge prisoners to live in a place where they’re being held against their will. The state already forces prisoners to work, but charging them to pay for their own cages is adding a de facto layer of punishment that wasn’t ordered by the judge and jury.<\/p>\n
This might be an issue that plays out in cases nationwide in the years ahead, because this one Massachusetts county wasn’t alone in imposing feees on prisoners.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
USA Today <\/a>reported in May on jails that charge fees in Virginia, Utah and Missouri — and plans to start charging in an Oregon jail.\u00a0 The Boston Globe<\/a> reported on several other plans to charge room and board — from Arizona to New York, New Jersey and Iowa.<\/p>\n The Southern Center for Human Rights<\/a>, which stands for prisoners’ rights on so many issues, is fighting such provisions. The center successfully prevented Georgia from starting such a program, and rightfully points out that this is a tax on people who can’t afford it — the families of prisoners. The incarceration of more than two million Americans has already devastated many poor communities, charging those communities for room and board would only exacerbate the collateral damage.<\/p>\n Via Legal Blog Watch<\/a>. Photo by mindluge<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A Massachusetts court this week ordered a local sheriff to repay more than $750,000 he had collected from prisoners by charging them for their stays in county jail — along with their haircuts, medical exams and eyeglasses. Nothing like a captive customer base. Too bad it was against the law. Starting in 2002, the sheriff […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":36,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-150567","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/150567","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/36"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=150567"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/150567\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=150567"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=150567"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=150567"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}