News Flash from ThinkProgress.org:
CALIFORNIA COUNTY WILL START CHARGING PRISONERS FOR THEIR JAIL STAY | CNN Money reports that the Riverside County board of supervisors yesterday approved a new measure that would allow their jails to charge some prisoners $142.42 a day for their stay. County supervisor Jeff Stone, who proposed the belt-tightening measure, justified it by saying it could save the county “between $3 million and $5 million annually.”
This is a slippery slope. "Some" now, more later. It's not like inmates have a choice of hotels. What if they are innocent of what they are accused of? What if it makes it easier to incarcerate our OWS for a night or two?
This is wrong.
I've read some of Bob Sloan's diaries here on the increasing profitability of privatised prisons. This kind of legislation would transfer costs of incarceration to individuals and not the taxpayer, thus creating an indentured underclass that would toil in or out of prison to benefit the private companies that build them. . ALEC legislation?