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Arizona prisons now charging visitors $25 to see inmates
By Jeff MillsSeptember 5th, 2011, 1:20 pmComments (21)
If you come from a poor family and are going to get arrested, make sure it's not in Arizona. New legislation, believed to be the first of its kind, allows the Arizona Department of Corrections to shake down charge adults twenty-five dollars each for the right to visit inmates at any of the state's fifteen prison complexes. These one-off penal paywalls were instituted under the pretext of using the extra money for background checks, but the Arizona Senate's chief of staff, Wendy Baldo, said the proceeds would help defray a $1.6 billion shortfall, and actually go into a fund for prison maintenance and repairs.
The correlation between low morale and violence is not a mystery, so this punishing of innocent visitors could backfire in that sense. Friends and family of inmates who already pay the expenses for long trips to visit, and often have low-income jobs, might just stop coming. It's not surprising to learn that Governor Brewer's chief of staff worked as a private prison lobbyist. Maybe they could also start charging visitors to use the bathroom and then hit them with an exit fee.
One inmate's wife said, "It's hard for a family to survive incarceration. They are wanting to make us pay a fee every year, which is just a way to make a profit off of families that are already struggling." But Arizona DOC Director Charles L. Ryan said in February that "the prison system costs the Arizona taxpayer about $1 billion a year and visitation is a privilege."
A Tempe-based group called Middle Ground Prison Reform filed a lawsuit against the Corrections Department last month, arguing the fee is just a pretext for raising money "for general public purposes," and is unconstitutional because it essentially amounts to a special tax on a single group. Middle Ground is also suing over one of the law's provisions which imposes a one-percent charge on each deposit to a prisoner's spending account.
Commentarium (21 Comments)
Some of Arizona’s ideas are progressive. This one is not. In fact, this legislation stinks. Shame on AZ for this insult to the justice and corrections systems. And shame on them for punishing the innocent families of inmates – especially the inmates children.
At this point if AZ wanted to break off and be its own country it seems that would be better for the rest of the U.S.
Yeah, shame on them, these poor rapists and murders should be allowed to see their children without a fee! And its completely health to bring a young child into a prison to see Dad, no problems there.
hi, clueless.
I'm with Greg on this one, snarf, so I'm afraid you're the one who's clueless.
hey snarf, get a fucking clue you rapist lover.
Is everyone in prison a rapist?
2/10.
My town in VA charges you a ninety dollar fee for appearing in court, even if you're found to be innocent. Talk about shaking people down and screwing the poor.
Now THAT I have a problem with. It is one thing to charge the guilty and another to charge the innocent.
If I really tried, I could kind of sort of see why this fee would apply to friends and family, but I would really have to stretch. But I cannot under any circumstances understand why this fee would apply to professionals, whether hired or assigned: attorneys, social workers, etc. Don't people have a constitutional right to legal counsel?
I work in corrections. Family visits are key to keeping prisoners under control. The easiest way to have guys go apeshit is to tell them they won't be having any visitors for the week when they break rules. I see the people who come visit; most of them are exhausted women and children who are making due without a wage-earner in their household. Usually that wage-earner is also a partner (husband, boyfriend). Visitors usually have to travel for hours to and from in a prison van used specifically to pick up visitors from various parts of the state. Making people already in a fucked up situation due to mistakes made by someone they love pay to visit for an hour is bullshit. Frankly, it is a dangerous policy. Incarceration is not pretty, this fee makes it uglier.
So a prison van drives visitors "for hours" to the prison? $25 seems like a bargain.
If you can't do the time, don't do the crime. I just made that up, just now.
How about this: Convicts incarcerated for the first time don't pay the fee. Subsequent incarcerations, they pay. Let's call the first one a mulligan (a "mistake"). After the first one, it's either not a mistake or it's a fee on stupidity. Either way, you pay.
well said
Finally! We have some real forward thinkers like "Whatever" around here. I'm so glad because gee, I was beginning to think that the world wasn't in terms of black and white but here we are! Black and white! Thank fucking Christ.
I'm not sure how I feel about the fee, but I agree 100% with the statement "visitation is a privilege."
The mulligan idea is interesting.
One thing is beyond argument: we spend a LOT of money housing inmates, and that money has to come from somewhere.
Quit making so many stupid laws and putting so many people in prison for BS. That would solve a lot of the problems of money being spent on corrections.
This is where the wheels come off with privatization. It's fine for pizza and shoes but not this.
Let's face it. Folk are in there because they either put their hand in someone else's pocket to steal what was rightfully the victims or took the victims human rights away in one form or another.
Now you demand your INTITALMENT to stick your stick your grubby hand in our pockets to uphold YOUR human rights.
We are the victims. You lost access to our public support network with the crime.
Your rights now should be limited to an occasional free breath and a cup of soup. Anything extra should be worked for while incarcerated, including bed and board, or sleep under a piece of tin in the yard.
All prisons should be in far northern Alaska where escape outside the heated prison block is impossible and heating of the facility is governed by the profitability of the prison workhouse.
No output, no heat.
Oh and forget visits. You just do the time. Second time in, all marriage certificates are nullified and families are resettled elsewhere at our expense in a "new start" programme.
A victim.
Welcome to the PRISON INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX! The U.S. has the highest rate of incarceration of any other country on the planet. 10%!! MOST of them are incarcerated for VICTIMLESS CRIMES! Let's start hacking at the ROOT of this problem, and that is ... QUIT PROSECUTING CRIMES that have NO VICTIMS!!
Watch your backs all of you "perfect" people. Look cross eyed at someone & get arrested for it in AZ. Then we'll see how you feel about visitation