Making inmates pay for food

Originally posted by xstealth

Man you are ridiculous. There are people in jail also that just shouldn't be there. I have a friend who did 6 months because he didn't give his ex wife enough child support.

There are people in there for stupid crimes man, like weed and playing poker? Give me a break, I don't even smoke but if someone wants to that's their right, and the government has no right to demand what people do and what to spend there money on as long as it doesn't effect other people.

Not everyone in there are rapists, thieves or murders.

A good chunk of them are...

Violent offenses 53%
Property offenses 21%
Drug offenses 19%
5.5% involved with pot. 13.5% heavier drugs.
Public-order offenses 6%
Includes weapons, drunk driving, court offenses, commercialized vice, morals and decency charges, liquor law violations, and other public-order offenses.
Other/unspecifiedd 1%
Includes juvenile offenses and unspecified felonies.






[edit on 18-12-2008 by Xtrozero]

Originally posted by Solomons
And to say *some* people *might* be innocent is just grasping at straws,thats your justice systems fault not the prison service.Different story entirely.

That's exactly what's wrong with the whole damned system. There are innocent people who end up as fodder.

In case you haven't realised it yet, people don't choose to go to prison. They are sent there by the justice system, so they should have their basic needs taken care of by the same justice system.

titorite, dude... I can't imagine the crap that you've had to put up with. I wouldn't be surprised if your story is quite common. I don't know how anyone could be compensated for having six months of their life stolen.

Allow me to clarify the innocence of jail thing.

A cop thinks you have broken the law. Said cop arrests you. Bail is set at 50,000 and because you can not even afford to pay ten percent of that you must wait months upon months for your trial.Upon trial it is proven you were innocent beyond a reasonable doubt.

Now why did you have to serve all that time. We are not discussing prisons we are discussing jails. Thieu is a difference.

And being fed only two meals a day is still inhuman. I mean why stop there why not feed them one meal a day? Better yet lets go all the way and just not feed them!

Thats what the people that support this idea are supporting.

I've been to jail and while some of the food is palatable for the most part it is foul, rancid and often had live bugs crawling in it and just plain inedible. (Cockroaches & maggots were common). So, if somebody demanded I pay I'd demand a certain level of quality - through the courts if necessary. Jail is a great place to go on a diet though.

I would of been more than happy to work and get paid in order to pay my room & board. Would of been much better than being locked in a cold room with stagnant air and nothing to do but read, sleep etc. However that's not possible for most facilities to provide work, except for a few jobs helping to run the facility there are laws which prohibit inmate labor to compete with legitimate companies that would be at an unfair disadvantage with labor costs.

So, how can they justify charging somebody the cost of their room & board while extracting labor and paying slave wages - often .25 an hour? They would have to pay completive wages for the guy sweeping the floor & then the room & board would be paid - while it would work for managing inmates it would not save any costs.

Bottom line though when an inmate is sentenced the judge can pretty much make them pay back whatever the judge decides, but they have mostly not charged for room & board because it would become a larger burden for the court adding all that extra cases to an already filled calender.

Though I must say it would be great if all our jails & prison inmates could be fixing our roads and infrastructure, but again labor unions don't like it and besides the DOC's are mostly so incompetent and corruption is higher than any other government agencies that it would cost more to transport and guard inmates than it would to hire regular joes to do the job - eventually.

Out of all the money squandered, pilfered and stolen from state/county budgets DOC's are the dirty little secret black holes where millions are unaccounted for. Where else can your charge taxpayers $9 for each meal, when it only cost you .67 cents to provide it. Where else can you charge taxpayers millions in phone infrastructure and operating cost while still extracting millions from inmate families in the form of 2-3 dollar an minute phone calls through the most highly coveted private little back room deals with the telcos.

You know most of the state licensed vehicle's you see on the road doing nothing to do with state business, that's the DOC motor pool and while you and I were paying $4 dollars a gallon last summer - they just filled up at the motor pool to get to & from work.

We once had a farm system in Washington that the dairy & meat products would feed the entire state prisons plus some of the schools, but with guards steeling meat to supply their own private butcher shops and dairy costs higher than buying it from local farmers the program was canceled because they it ended up costing more to produce food then buying it on the free market.

Besides one thing people are not considering why so many inmates are indigent. Probably somewhere around 30% are seriously mentally ill, then there's another 40%+ that are below a 6th grade educational level - average eduction level is 8th grade. All they need is an education and direction - instead they mostly get educated in crime and they are either too proud to admit or don't believe they can learn or catch up with their free peers.

Anyone who's ever not paid a ticket on time knows how hard it is to catch up because the compounding fees and fines that you must pay while continuing to pay your normal bills. Adding unnecessary extra cost and burden to ex-inmates trying to live a normal life and pay their bills just pushes them back into crime and back into the taxpayers pockets.

It's good for a change to have a sheriff that saves the taxpayers money, but I'm not so sure about that. Where I live the jailers are robbing us blind - they let them work overtime so it jacks their pay to two - to three times their salary's and their retirements are based and their best two or three years pay. So they work overtime a couple of years and then their retirements are based on 85-115k salary's instead of 45-60k.

[edit on 18-12-2008 by verylowfrequency]

reply to post by titorite


Everyone should have three basic meals (maybe meal bars) and water, nothing special. Some kind of reward system, work for better food, etc, should be in place. The harder you work, more disciplined and the better off you are. This would help rehabilitate some people.

In the odd chance someone is truly innocent and should not be there, they could work enough to be far more comfortable than the average criminal who lacks discipline and refuses to put forth any effort.

In your case I think the judicial system failed you, not the prison system, which is a whole different topic and much bigger problem than the prison system.

reply to post by MikeboydUS



LOL... you MikeboydUS what state is your unit in? And if I may go one step further is it a jail or prison?

In my case the system did fail me. Worst thing about it all is that my case is not uncommon. Yes the majority of 500 men were guilty but a good lot of folks were not.

I served my time in the Guadalupe county jail.

While there I did the trustee thing.

IT is not the best jail (if there is such a thing) and it was not the worst jail but at least they fed us three times a day.

Morality edit:
Also Quit your job. Guards don't have it much better than inmates. It would be a boon to your entire outlook on life.

[edit on 18-12-2008 by titorite]

I see no reason why inmates should not be forced to work, and I mean hard labor - like you used to see chain gangs cleaning the roadsides.
If they can’t physically then force them to do something - produce something to give back to the community.

Pay for their food?
You betcha, and their tv and blankets and anything else given as a freebee while they complete their sentence.

If nothing else they’re going to learn you have to work to eat.

What’s going to happen to them after the system has been feeding and clothing and caring for them for years and they get out of prison and nobody is handing them a thing?
Commit a crime and go right back - they’re institutionalized by that point! (meaning they can’t live on the outside).

It’s really doing them a disservice not to force their hands to responsible work in payment for what they get - just like everyone on the outside has to do.

EDIT:

As was pointed out to me in a U2U (and I thank the sender) there is a ever present problem of guilty vs. innocent and everything in between. (people being held for trial, etc).

There are far too many people *enrolled* in the prison system that are in fact innocent and don’t get a dime for the time of their life they spent incarcerated.

The thought horrifies me - as I’m sure it does anyone with any compassion.
But facts are facts.
The majority of the people incarcerated are there through their own fault, and, I don’t believe they should get a *free ride* because of the few innocent among them.
It’s a conundrum for sure.

I by no means want to see the innocent pay...
But Ill be damned if because of that, the guilty should get off without having to pay in triple.


*P*E*A*C*E*

[edit on 18-12-2008 by silo13]

reply to post by titorite


The state is Louisiana and it is a prison (not the state Freudian slip? ), they put the guys in white jumpsuits with DOC (Department of Corrections) printed on the backs.

I'm not a prison guard, my unit is a National Guard unit. I would hate to be a prison guard. I looked at joining the Sheriff Dept. here, since they help pay for college and offer decent pay bonuses for degrees and physical fitness, but you have to start at the parish correctional center or jail at the parish court house.

I don't want any part of that. I don't have the self control needed when handling people who might urinate on you or throw feces at you.


[edit on 18/12/08 by MikeboydUS]

Ahh that kind of unit.. well then at the risk of going off topic allow me to share with you what I share with all my friend in the armed forces or thinking about joining the armed forces.

RUN! RUN NOW GET OUT BEFORE THEY SEND YOU TO IRAQ!

reply to post by titorite


Been there and got the T-shirt , been to Afghanistan too, back when I was active duty in the Army. My guard unit is Air Force, which is a whole other universe. We're a different kind of unit, we don't deploy as a whole. We send special individuals who are attached to other units in theater. I wouldn't mind going so much under current circumstances. I would prefer deployment overseas to dealing with refugees from New Orleans again.

[edit on 18/12/08 by MikeboydUS]

Originally posted by MikeboydUS
I looked at joining the Sheriff Dept. here, since they help pay for college and offer decent pay bonuses for degrees and physical fitness, but you have to start at the parish correctional center or jail at the parish court house.

I don't want any part of that. I don't have the self control needed when handling people who might urinate on you or throw feces at you.

That's pretty common - My uncle joined the San Diego Sheriff's and ended up quiting, not because bad inmates that threw urine & feces, but because what his co-workers did to human beings that caused them to lower to the level of animals who threw urine & feces.

When people have no dignity left and no means to fight back, they become broken human beings and they will do disgusting things as their mental illness is cultivated by the evil deeds and treatment done to them. Most are unable to grasps the entire picture, but if you look further you would see that all is not what you are made to believe.

I'm more disgusted by the evil creatures who create the lost minions who do disgusting dirty deeds that you will find in many jails & prisons in America.

[edit on 18-12-2008 by verylowfrequency]

Pay for there damn meals with what ffs?
They are in Jail, they cant get a job.
They can earn 5 cents an hour for doing the laundry.
What they wanna take there 5 cents off them too?
How freaking evil and psychopathic.
Stop making every single little thing so damn illegal and giving 20 years in prison for possessing a joint of freaking marijuana, which before DuPont lobbied the government to ban it, was legal anyway.
The only reason marijuana was made illegal was so DuPont could own the modern textiles industry with plastics and chemicals.
The war on drugs IS A DAMN SCAM!
Its setup to take tax payers money and give it to private corporations at the expense of human lives.

the war on anything that does not inflict on anothers free will is doing exactly the opposite

regardless of substance, coke or marijuana, if you using this is not inflicting influence on another, it is not a crime.

the mind state is illegal not the drug

the reason why the mindstate is illegal is because when within them, it is easier, if not necessary, or natural, to see out the box.

drugs are not illegal to protect our health, they are illegal to prevent us from taking them, which in turn prevents us from realising our conditioning, from thinking, and ofcourse to create a sub niche of high value products the CIA can sell to us.

On the subject of making inmates pay for food. well. i agree with the person who said that they are kept upon their free will, and so they should be provided for.

however if it is done in the correct manner, where they are encouraged and taught how to cultivate crops and so on, then this could be a positve thing, however i would expect its much closer to mopping the floor.

I don't really have a problem for inmates paying for thier stay or working while in prison to pay it off.

but...

Anyone saluting Sheriff Joe needs to read up on this man. He is plain evil.

Many people have been killed by his employess while in prison. He uses an interregation chair where he straps people and tortures them (before arraignment) , or how about the pregnant women who was beaten while in jail by gang members and refused medical attention until the lawyer demanded it during her arraignment (sp) after she had been bleeding for days and had already lost her baby.

Or when he demanded the names of every person who visited the Pheonix New Times website after they printed his address concerning a shady land deal he was involved with. He then arrested the editors of the paper when they refused to give him that info.

Maybe the unmarked vans that snatch up hispanic people with no justification because they MIGHT be illeagally in the US.

The amount of money he has cost the taxpayer 40 million plus in lawsuits, not counting the pending suits will not be made up by having people pay for thier meals.

The phoenix jail system is ranked with third world countries because of him.

google : Phoenix New Times and Joe Arrapio and you will see how sick and twisted this guy is.



[edit on 18-12-2008 by drock905]

Well I just wanted to say to all the fiscal conservatives and hawks.
Do you know how much the US sinks into pot convictions?

I just find the redistribution of wealth thing is so cute when you could save billions and billions by decriminalizing marijuana. BUT___ No its illegal___ lets jail the pot heads and moan about spending...



Back on topic...



You right wingers should stop speaking ENGLISH and just say " %$#K UM " every time you open yer hate holes.


Makes me want to take yer guns just because y'all are so disgusting.

You guys worship SHERIFF John Burnell to hard.

From my understanding, his prison camp is tough, but the percentage of parolees returning to prison after being there is very low compared to the rest of the prison system.

He is teaching them responsibility, something they are most likely lacking or they wouldn't be there. Every capable person works and pays their debt. How are they paying their debt if they are lounging in air condition and watching cable television?

Some are innocent, thats not his fault. He didn't try and convict them, he is performing the duties given to him. It is not his place to determine whether they are guilty or not. He performs his duties after that fact has been established.

Keep up the good work Joe.

There is a difference between prison and jail. You go to jail if you are charged with a crime, whether you are innocent or not doesn't matter. You go to prison if you are convicted of a crime.

Should convicted criminals be made to do hard time? Hell yes. ( I DO NOT believe that tax payer money should be wasted on incarcerating drug addicts, the money is better spent trying to fix them! )

Should persons charged but not yet be convicted be doing hard time? Hell no.

You know who is in jail? Mostly the people who cannot afford to get bailed out.

So if you have the cash you can now eat and get out of jail.

I'm so sick and tired of people saying that incarceration is a country club because it isn't. I have a very close family member who did HARD time in Florida State prisons for a drug offense, basically she is an addict who got caught once to many times. So the state of Florida decided that instead of treatment it would be better for tax payers monies to be used to incarcerate her. That's rubbish in my opinion. Guess what happened when she got out of prison? She got high again. Thankfully, the US government decided to spend a few more thousand dollars to deport her. Today, after treatment paid for by the Swiss taxpayers, she is a responsible and contributing member of society.

Originally posted by wheresthetruth
I have to disagree that drug charges dont rank. If you buy, sell, or consume drugs deemed illegal by the government, then you should be punished for the crime.

Because people who all those people are such heinous scumbags that dabbling in something the Govt. deems illegal means they should be incarcerated, lose liberty and generally be ostracised by society.

I'll be down the pub getting blind drunk and smoking a tonne of ciggies, eating half a pig and being an obnoxious tosser if you need me.

Originally posted by xstealth

Originally posted by wheresthetruth
GO JOE!
His policies and steadfast resolve of treating criminals like criminals is an inspiration. People shouldnt think of jail as a free vacation resort, it should be harsh and give them a reason not to commit major crimes again.

Man you are ridiculous. There are people in jail also that just shouldn't be there. I have a friend who did 6 months because he didn't give his ex wife enough child support. He lost his job, and fed and clothed that baby still - she didn't do anything but sit around demanding her child support so she could go shopping.

There are people in there for stupid crimes man, like weed and playing poker? Give me a break, I don't even smoke but if someone wants to that's their right, and the government has no right to demand what people do and what to spend there money on as long as it doesn't effect other people.

Not everyone in there are rapists, thieves or murders.

Sorry for your friend. But this nation is loaded with deadbeat dads who don't pay a penny. The tough laws were created to protect the kids and your friend got sucked in because of the die hard deadbeats. Granted, there are plenty of moms who squander what money they do get. Sadly, the kids pay the price.

Sorry for the sidebar. This Sheriff is a genius and his system should be a model for the rest of the county systems in this country. Jail should be a deterrent not a free pass.

reply to post by wheresthetruth


The Constitution doesnt delegate any power to the government to dictate what people may or may not put into their own bodies.

Everyone knows they are only illegal because government cant tax drugs, thats all this is about: revenue.