Exorbitant Pay-to-Stay Debts Follow Incarcerated Individuals Long After Release

Imagine getting released from prison and doing everything “right”: completing probation, completing a young offender bootcamp, completing every term listed on paper, even receiving a handwritten card from the judge telling you he knew you could do it. But then, when you go to apply for your dream job, you find that your time in prison has followed you there. Not because you are not qualified, but because, unbeknownst to you, you owe the state $50 a day for the seven years of your original sentence, even though you were only held for less than a year. This was the case for Shelby Hoffman, when she applied for an exemption from disqualification so she could work in her dream job. She found out that Florida’s “pay-to-stay” law charges inmates for their prison stay based on the prison’s sentence, not the actual time served, and she now owed over $100,000 in debt to Florida.

Shelby’s case is not irregular. Rather, it is the shared reality for many people who are currently or formerly incarcerated. Fees are often assessed based on costs of incarceration or care, and are assessed for room & board and additionally as medical co-pays. For example, in Connecticut, individuals imprisoned in one state institution had to pay $249 per day for room & board, an incredible amount even without considering that the maximum hourly rate a Connecticut inmate working a job in prison can earn is $1.50.

Unsurprisingly, formerly incarcerated individuals can rarely afford to pay back the staggering pay-to-stay fees, and the debt from the fees commonly hangs over their heads for years. The fees lead to contempt charges, placing individuals back in prison where they can be charged more fees; if it remains unpaid, the debt can be sold to collection agencies, and in some instances can cause garnished wages or the seizing of individuals’ inheritance. The fees do not serve a legitimate fiscal purpose, typically collecting less than 1% of the corrections overall budget, likely because few formerly incarcerated individuals can afford the fees, and the costs they seek to recover are not the majority of the corrections budget to begin with. For example, in 2019 in Connecticut, the State collected $6 million, recouping less than 1% of the state’s $632 million corrections budget. This is the norm: actual reimbursement at a number that amounts to no more than a footnote in the actual corrections budget, often costing as much to run collections as is actually collected. Yet, the harm to incarcerated people is real and substantial.

This practice is incredibly punitive and creates further barriers for formerly incarcerated individuals reentering society. One study found 38% of people surveyed in Alabama committed a second crime to pay off their court debt. Another report details the impacts of seizing inheritance, a policy allowed by over half of U.S. states that disproportionately affects Black families and other marginalized communities. Pay-to-stay fees not only impact the individual incarcerated, but also their families, further impacting marginalized communities.

In addition to Room & Board fees, most states charge a co-pay, a set fee for each self-initiated health visit, that is usually around $5.00 per visit, and can go as high as $13.50. While these numbers may seem low, this represented a significant portion of people’s hourly prison wages, which are usually less than $1.00 an hour. Most prisoners in Illinois make $10.00 or $15.00 a month, money that needs to cover an incarcerated person’s medical co-pays, commissary, and other health needs. In 16 states, the medical copay for one visit is more than an entire week’s worth of wages. The inadequacy of the care actually received, along with the costs of the co-pay (usually requiring foregoing other products), means incarcerated individuals often go without medical care, leading to the spread of disease and worsening of illnesses. These co-pays render toothless the constitutional requirement to provide medical care to incarcerated individuals, and further punishes them for not having money to pay.

These fees fly in the face of justice. Unlike other government fees, they are not assessed for a service that one chooses or benefits from: instead, they are assessed based on an involuntary sentence. And, contrary to the purported goal of the justice system, to make the country safer, these fees make it harder to break out of cycles of poverty and spur recidivism. Finally, the fees defy the concept of equal treatment under the law. For those who cannot afford the fees, their sentence continues after release, leading to numerous harms and disproportionately punishing those who cannot afford the fees.

Equal Justice Under Law plans to enter the fight against booking fees, and challenge these policies that punish incarcerated individuals for their lack of money. Our mission is to fight to achieve equality in the criminal-legal system and help to end cycles of poverty. Eliminating pay-to-stay fees is a critical part of the fight to create a justice system that works for everyone, not just those who can afford it.