Just to really fuck up your life when you get out

The US is starting to sound made up

Isn't the US famous for their prison for profit, where prisons are privately owned and states need to pay if there are fewer incarcerated people inside?

To me, this sounds straight from 1984.

This is some serious "keep hitting yourself" material. It's not like you can decide to not be incarcerated. $7300-$29200 of debt per year spent in prison. Man, that is some vicious shit. Nobody will be able to convince me that this is not specifically designed to keep people down forever.

It's actually worse than that... I went looking for a list, I found this:

https://www.vox.com/2015/5/26/8660001/prison-jail-cost

"Forty-three states allow inmates to get charged for "room and board" — the cost of their own imprisonment. Thirty-five states charge inmates for at least some medical expenses. Taken together, at least 49 states have a law on the books that authorizes at least one of the two. (Hawaii, as well as DC, doesn't have statutes that explicitly address pay-to-stay.)"

That's the beauty of both ruling parties being 100% in support of the prison industrial complex. In fact, our current president even helped usher through the '94 Crime Bill, which keeps prisons nice and full for his golf buddies and institutional donors.

I just heard about that for the first time a few days ago, and I couldn't believe it was real. As horrible as I think the United States of Ferenginar is, they always manage to surprise me and be worse.

Obligatory Incarceration in Real Numbers

The people writing these laws and the people paying them to write them are the ones who belong in prison.

I have a friend who was in. Outrageously expensive! Paid 'rent', paid for various classes he was required to take, and paid for each mandatory random drig test. Plus, what they have to pay for phone calls is crazy!!

This is what conservatives wanted. This is what Democrats wanted. This is what capitalists wanted. America is a fucking authoritarian shithole. It has no concept at all what freedom is, and never has. All of that "freedom" shit is a bald faced fucking lie.

And now some asshole raised in some Appalachian shithole is gonna stomp in here and try to tell everyone that America is great because he served in Afghanistan and if you hate America move

rationales justifying these fees routinely do not recognize them as a form of punishment and instead policymakers see pay-to-stay as financial reimbursement to the state by portraying incarcerated people as using up system resources. The justification allows pay-to-stay statutes to survive legal arguments alleging double punishment.

Shouldve shopped around for a prison within your means

Might be somewhat acceptable if a job was available while in prison to support these living expenses. That at least might improve confidence and start the rehabilitation process.

Oh wait, who am I kidding. Prison has nothing to do with rehabilitation.

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 sum that is able to be collected doesn't go straight into the county coffers, either - the jail contracts with a company

The jail gets 30%, the company gets 70%.

It really just looks like just another way to exploit prisoners for profit.

How to absolutely destroy your net worth:

Step 1: go to prison

There is no step 2.

How is this not considered cruel or unusual punishment?

On release: "you've paid your debt to society, now pay your debt to the prison!"

The very idea is absurd. It is so counter productive to the idea of rehabilitation. The prisons themselves say they aren't a significant revenue stream. Trying to offset the cost of a societal need by charging fees to prisons doesn't even make any sense. And the companies that are tasked with collecting this debt get 70% of what they collect which means that even the argument about offsetting the state's cost doesn't make sense.

It's profit seeking, counter productive cruelty and that's it. Just shameful.

System of a down - Prison song.

The US is in free fall. Kinda crazy to see how passive the people are there.

In Oz you get paid a small amount per day so you have some adjustment money when you get out