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At $249 per day, prison stays leave ex-inmates deep in debt

apnews.com

251–260 of 374 posts

Re: At $249 per day, prison stays leave ex-inmates deep in debt

#251

What happens if you can't pay or refuse to pay? Do they put you back in prison?

The article covers this — they take money any opportunity they can. The person profiled in the article owes 1.5 million after 17 years, so will never be able to accumulate any sort of wealth.

I guess it's too much to hope for that this debt can be discharged during personal bankruptcy?

And is it politically incorrect to say that this is essentially a form of slavery?

Re: At $249 per day, prison stays leave ex-inmates deep in debt

#252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your bank app doesn't have shortcuts to pay fines and taxes?

Is that a thing… anywhere?

Yep :) it's a thing in South Africa, been able to it for more than a decade. Before that I could just go to any post office and pay the fine there.

Not taxes though. My tax is automatically deducted from my salary and paid by my employer every month. All employers do this.

Re: At $249 per day, prison stays leave ex-inmates deep in debt

#253

Years ago, I got a speeding ticket. I worked nights at the time, and the office to make the payment at had very strange hours because it was from a tiny town. My schedule made it difficult to make it over to the office during open hours, and one of the times I tried it was closed randomly over lunch because again, small town. (I learned later there was only one person who ran the whole office.) A day after my speedin…

That is frustrating, but when were you planning to pay? Couldn’t you have mailed it in?

Suspended license driving is anti-social. Any law with a firm cutoff or deadline, and no gradual increase of penalty, sucks for those who barely miss complying with it. There needs to be some kind of consequence, though.

Re: At $249 per day, prison stays leave ex-inmates deep in debt

#254

Years ago, I got a speeding ticket. I worked nights at the time, and the office to make the payment at had very strange hours because it was from a tiny town. My schedule made it difficult to make it over to the office during open hours, and one of the times I tried it was closed randomly over lunch because again, small town. (I learned later there was only one person who ran the whole office.) A day after my speedin…

You cannot pay your tickets by wiring the money?

How is that possibly the issue here?

Re: At $249 per day, prison stays leave ex-inmates deep in debt

#255

What drives me absolutely insane about stories like this is that so many of the people suffering under these policies are guilty of little more than market participation. The government strains, at extraordinary expense, to pretend they can stop drugs from being made, bought and sold, but they can't. They simply can't. Countless laws, countless billions of dollars and countless ruined lives later, drugs are no less p…

Many of people incarcerated in US are there for no crime at all: https://twitter.com/equalityAlec/status/1562849803297366017.

Re: At $249 per day, prison stays leave ex-inmates deep in debt

#256
post #40

What drives me absolutely insane about stories like this is that so many of the people suffering under these policies are guilty of little more than market participation. The government strains, at extraordinary expense, to pretend they can stop drugs from being made, bought and sold, but they can't. They simply can't. Countless laws, countless billions of dollars and countless ruined lives later, drugs are no less p…

There are over 2 MILLION prisoners in the US prison population of a population of 330M. This gives the USA the highest incarceration rate of any country in the world. The next four? * Rwanda * Turkmenistan * El Salvador * Cuba [1]: https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/incarcera...

> 2 MILLION prisoners

Just note that this story is about Jails, not Prison. They are different.

Re: At $249 per day, prison stays leave ex-inmates deep in debt

#257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That and, you know, profit.

There isn’t enough profit there though for that to be the driving force. Prisons as an industry make far less than industries with little to no political sway for even trivial protectionist policies.

Those 11B$ each year from slave labour are an important part of some states economy: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/jun/15/us-prison-wo...

Re: At $249 per day, prison stays leave ex-inmates deep in debt

#258
post #40

What drives me absolutely insane about stories like this is that so many of the people suffering under these policies are guilty of little more than market participation. The government strains, at extraordinary expense, to pretend they can stop drugs from being made, bought and sold, but they can't. They simply can't. Countless laws, countless billions of dollars and countless ruined lives later, drugs are no less p…

There are over 2 MILLION prisoners in the US prison population of a population of 330M. This gives the USA the highest incarceration rate of any country in the world. The next four? * Rwanda * Turkmenistan * El Salvador * Cuba [1]: https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/incarcera...

Not to say we don't have a huge problem in our (in)justice system, but those stats seem to ignore genocide and war?

Rough numbers reported a lot are 1mm uighurs, 1.6mm ukrainians through Russian 'filtration' camps (though most aren't held long term).

Re: At $249 per day, prison stays leave ex-inmates deep in debt

#259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s insane. Prison conditions in the US are infamous for the degrading of the human experience to a point of no return. Open rape culture, radicalization, utterly despicable behavior that even barbarians would shiver at openly covered in popular culture as fact. As someone who grew up outside the US, it is truly astonishing how fucked up the system is.

That’s pretty normal for prison culture worldwide. US prisons are far less inhumane than, say, France.

French prisons use slave labour?

Re: At $249 per day, prison stays leave ex-inmates deep in debt

#260
post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Correct. It's a statistic many people are not aware of. Additionally, if you look at the racial breakdown of who's incarcerated in the USA, it's disproportionately black relative to number of blacks per capita residing in the country. Blacks are incarcerated at 5x the rate of whites, and make up 40% of all incarcerated individuals. This is insane.

Do blacks commit more crime, or are they only more likely to be incarcerated as a result?

There are systemic issues, prejudices, and discrimination that put dark skinned / people of color at a disadvantage at almost every point in the system. American society is rigged against these folks.

Example from yesterday, a black pastor was arrested for watering his neighbors plants because he "looked suspicious":

https://news.yahoo.com/black-alabama-pastor-says-wrongfully-...

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