Criminal justice debt drags people further away from reintegration with civil society. A person's life can spiral out of their control when interest, late fees, revocation of a driver's license and ineligibility for public assistance, mean that unpaid criminal justice debt snowballs. You can't get blood from a stone but if you try, you can break the stone.
In the past year and a half I've met many broken stones.
I've been surprised to learn how many inmates at the county jail are there for failure to pay fines and how many of them have lost their jobs due to incarceration for failure to pay fines. I was also surprised to learn that people who are serving sentences for misdemeanor charges are required to pay to stay. Many of them are thousands of dollars in debt to the community when they are released.
Part of the thinking behind our local pay-to-stay program is that it will encourage people to stop committing crimes. I get that, and it may be true for some. But based on my experience, I suspect that it is a predominantly counterproductive idea.
Sure inmates are in a pickle because of their own choices. I do believe we all need to face the consequences of our choices. But most of them are already paying for their choices in a multitude of ways. And they will be paying for their choices long after they've served their sentences. If we want them to choose a legitimate path, it doesn't make sense to me to marginalize them even more by pushing them further into debt.
What does make sense--from both a public safety standpoint (politically feasible) and a humanitarian standpoint (which is apparently no longer as politically feasible because, you see, "we are a Christian nation" and so no one should be forced to be charitable through taxation)--is to do what we can to draw people in from the margins of society.
I've been surprised to learn how many inmates at the county jail are there for failure to pay fines and how many of them have lost their jobs due to incarceration for failure to pay fines. I was also surprised to learn that people who are serving sentences for misdemeanor charges are required to pay to stay. Many of them are thousands of dollars in debt to the community when they are released.
Part of the thinking behind our local pay-to-stay program is that it will encourage people to stop committing crimes. I get that, and it may be true for some. But based on my experience, I suspect that it is a predominantly counterproductive idea.
Sure inmates are in a pickle because of their own choices. I do believe we all need to face the consequences of our choices. But most of them are already paying for their choices in a multitude of ways. And they will be paying for their choices long after they've served their sentences. If we want them to choose a legitimate path, it doesn't make sense to me to marginalize them even more by pushing them further into debt.
What does make sense--from both a public safety standpoint (politically feasible) and a humanitarian standpoint (which is apparently no longer as politically feasible because, you see, "we are a Christian nation" and so no one should be forced to be charitable through taxation)--is to do what we can to draw people in from the margins of society.
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