Very weird that I am so old and have literally never heard this mentioned in a TV show or book or movie or anything.
In four out of five states, if you go to prison, you are literally paying for the time you spend there.
As you can guess, this results in crippling debt as soon as you’re released.
The county gets back a fraction of what they hold over your head the rest of your life until you commit suicide(or die naturally and peacefully with the sword of damocles hanging over your head).
$20-$80 a day according to Rutgers.
Counties apparently sue people and employ wage garnishment to get back the money that majority of people obviously cannot pay back.
https://www.rutgers.edu/news/states-unfairly-burdening-incarcerated-people-pay-stay-fees
Just to really fuck up your life when you get out
In particular, to force you back into crime, to be able to pay for that debt.
The system is working as intended
The US is starting to sound made up
I left America over a decade ago due to a laundry list of grievances that I developed while having only ever lived in America.
Once I started living in other countries, I finally developed context to compare my American life with. And it just made things look so much worse than I had previously thought.
And now it feels like not a day can go by without learning some new awful truth about my former home.
Where did you go, if you don’t mind me asking? It’s certainly something we’ve talked about…
I hopped around Southeast Asia until I landed in Japan.
It’s not easy here, and it’s not without its own problems, but it works much better for me.
(I’d probably still be in Singapore were it not for the heat. The food is 10/10 and dirt cheap, but I missed seasons.)
(I knew that answering this question would make the jerks upset somehow.)
Do you have to struggle with the insane only work, no life, salary man/woman problems? Or did you find something that doesn’t follow that “life style?”
No, I see it but I don’t have to deal with it.
It’s also not as much of a constant as it used to be.
It’s unfortunate you left… When good people leave, we’re stuck with more of the bad gaining power.
If we lose this country to the bad people even more than it’s already been lost, then the entire world may pay dearly as a result.
If he left a solid red or blue state, it doesn’t really matter. Our minority representation, first pst the pole voting and electoral college means that a lot of smart people from cities or solid blue areas can leave and nothing will change.
Plus OP’s an outlier, most of us can’t afford to relocate like this.
It’s called the American Dream because you’ve got to be asleep to believe it
isn’t every country made up after all?
But this has begun sounding like made up details, like someone heard how we feel and they decided to play into those concerns to see how much we’d believe before calling them out.
It was. Everywhere was.
Yes, but the more I live and hear things about the states it starts to sound like satire or as if it’s a joke to see what other people will believe.
You’re just getting older, haha. The longer we live, the more we can’t help seeing what’s right in front of us.
Nah, it’s exactly the other way around. Except for a tiny minority. All the others have to ignore what’s around them in order to not go insane.
I can understand why it seems that way, but the broad American public supports civil and labor liberties, green energy, healthy and equitable policies in general; it’s the vocal minority that is subverting the will of the more fair-minded, rational and compassionate majority(sure would be nice if more than one out of every three or four people voted).
And I don’t even think most conservatives believe in the policies they support so much as they don’t comprehend what they’re supporting and they are afraid of relinquishing control over what they narrowly perceive as “power” and “freedom”.
The ones I’ve talked to don’t.
I feel like most of them only vote R because they’re getting bamboozled into believing that the Rs stand for conservative, Christian, family values.
Anecdotally, ignorance and fear seems to be significant factors supporting conservative beliefs.
When I tell a liberal something that they aren’t expecting or that they didn’t know, they’ll respond with “what? How do you know that? Really?”
Then with a conservative, I usually get “No, no. Really? Well, I don’t know about that, anyway…”
And that’ll be some hard truth or contradicting statistic that the conservative doesn’t want to address or learn about because it will fly in the face of a fear or ignorance based belief.
If only that were true for everyone.
I’d like to believe that. Social Media did a great job of reprogramming people.
Media did a great job before that, and humans tend to get conservative as they age, so I think there’s a lot of factors working together to make people more cynical than they ought to be.
I honeatly think that a lot.
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.
Yeah, the states is the most country with for-profit prisons, and not coincidentally incarcerates the 6th highest percentage of its population of any country, just about half a percent of the total population at any time, or somewhere under 2 million people.
But boy howdy, do those percentages change when you control for economic class and ethnicity.
It’s less than ten percent of federal prisons. Police unions (including correctional officers) have a greater impact.
I don’t remember prisons being mentioned in 1984. They just vaporized people and then acted like they never existed
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.
Remember, though, that people, opinions, and political landscapes can change. Yes, Biden was pretty shit back in the 90s, but it actually feels a little bit like he’s trying to move back in the other direction. Don’t gotta forget the bad, but also can’t forget the (attempts at) good
Right it’s important to remember 94 was literally 30 years ago. Attitudes can change significantly in that time.
Remember, though, that people, opinions, and political landscapes can change.
Yeah, but Biden hasn’t.
Remember when he mocked ‘Defund the Police’ in his first state of the union address?
He’s an authoritarian. Always has been, and he’s been a reliable vote in favor of every regressive piece of legislation that’s led the country to this point, where fascism is becoming normalized.
Oh, please. If he was an authoritarian, he would behave like Trump or any other authoritarian ruler out there.
Remember when Trump was president? He would kick reporters out of the white house, or tear gas people in front of the white house for a photo op. He said stuff like “I totally won’t do this,” then the very following day, he would do that. His speech was divisive. Should I go on?
Just because Trump was more personally belligerent doesn’t change the fact that Biden is an authoritarian.
You just spotted my flawed argument. True. Biden is not authoritarian, though.
Tell me how is Biden authoritarian, Russian Agent #4557?
Going ad hominem just makes you look sillier.
I asked you a question, Chat GPT spawn. Answer it.
People change as the issues become more apparent, when Obama was elected he said he “Respected the LGBT Community” but firmly believed “Marriage is between a man and a woman”
This same president gave us Gay Marriage in all 50 states
He’s had some policies I agree with, that move us towards a less police state level. I admit, I haven’t followed him super closely, he’s less interesting than things have been lately, but at least the federal decriminalization of marijuana and pardons (I know they were effectively useless, didn’t really do anything - we can get into exactly why) show he’s at least trying to do what constituents want, which is a far cry more than a lot of other politicians.
Can he, should he, do more? Yeah. But credit where it’s due, he seems like he’s trying to steer two giant ships - his own past biases, and the United States political climate. Both of those are slow and hard to do, so anything moving in that direction should be celebrated.
Don’t be fooled, Joe doesn’t give a shit about decriminalizing any substance, after all, he wqs the biggest proponent of the RAVE act
See, this is EXACTLY my point. We all get obsessed over the things of the past, and while those can help inform us of the present, they’re not actually the present.
Yes, he was a proponent of the RAVE act. That’s one of those “don’t forget the bads” that I mentioned. We can accept that, and also accept that he seems to have lightened up on that BS in recent times.
No one’s perfect, everyone changes their minds about things. You did horrible things in your past too, almost certainly. That’s not you, we can accept that, but for politicians it’s this unchanging thing - you supported one thing, you will always continue supporting that thing.
Let people grow. Let ideas be brought up, and shot down. Let mistakes be in the past, and start focusing on what’s actually happening in the present.
It’s not about “being obsessed with the past” it’s about paying attention to history, particularly a certain person’s history. Joe biden had not been even remotely interested in legalization/decriminalization until he started running for office. Joe Biden was already an old man when he pushed for enforcement of the RAVE act along with other drug bills, I can maybe understand his “concrete jungle” statements from the 70’s, but we are literally talking about barely over 20 years ago.
All I am saying is to be cautious and not too trusting, ESPECIALLY of politicians.
Right. As I said, you can use the past to color your present, but the thing that matters presently is present actions and, to a lesser extent, words. So, judging him based on his actions during presidency, which should show us either his current beliefs or, at least, his willingness to listen to constituents.
During his presidency, he’s been… Well, I won’t say stellar, but his actions have been more in line with someone who actually wants better, rather than someone who wants to cling to old habits. Again, could he do more, yes. But his record -recently- has been, for a politician, pretty good.
You bring up the RAVE act. That was 20 years ago. 20 of the most eventful years in at least modern history. Do you think someone is incapable of change for 20 years? I know I’ve changed drastically just in the last 2 or 3 years. I mean, yeah, he’s old, but I’ve seen old people change too. Might not come full revolution, change is slow, but again - any progress is worth acknowledging and celebrating.
Is there something he’s done during his presidency that leads you to believe he’s still got those same values from prior? We can talk efficacy of some of his planned solutions, and some of his lack of a spine, but I think overall his actions are consistent with his words, in this regard.
Liberals hate the fact they openly support a right wing segregationist authoritarian
They don’t hate that fact enough, unfortunately.
When in most of our lifetimes has the u.s. presidental election not been ‘the lesser of two evils’?
This excuse, to me, seems to emphasize the necessity of a third-party vote even more.
Yeah, he wants to be known as a good guy. Look at GW Bush. They all want to be known as good guys late in life. Gates, Buffet, et al.
so then vote for trump, right? gtfooh
I vote third party.
Choosing between a giant douche and a turd sandwich isn’t very appealing to me.
Also, people like you pretending you didn’t need the votes of people like me is how we got Trump in the first place.
sure. hold humanity hostage because you can’t get exactly what you want, traitor. i’m not going to kiss your ass to vote for practical results. if you’re too blind to see what you’re doing, you can live with the consequences. i have a feeling you have a lot more time left on this planet than i do, junior.
Jesus Christ, you’re calling another person a traitor over… this. XD
You Americans are like a bad parody. What a terrible farce this is.
In a two party system, voting third party will only ever result in your vote being thrown out. It is taking a stand against reality for the sake of your own personal idealism.
A lot of left-aligned voters learned that lesson the hard way in 2016. If you didn’t learn the lesson, you either weren’t paying attention or your idealism is more important to you than the actual outcome of the vote.
Doing that willingly, despite (or maybe because) the rest of your side screaming at you not to fuck this up again, is absolutely a level of betrayal.
Yeah, this whole explanation is just you saying “Our country is broken and I don’t want to fix it”.
More like “you think you’re helping but you are not”
Yea OK, just keep voting for same parties over and over again. Let’s just maintain the shitty status quo where nothing really gets better regardless of who is in office!
So your solution is to vote in protest for a party you know won’t win.
I’m actually curious now, what possible good do you think that’s doing?
Blah blah blah same propaganda, same lies. Even a fool could say you’re trying to get Trump elected.
Oh no! somebody criticized Biden!
criticize him all you want… after he’s elected.
we all hate the either/or state of american politics, but it’s still the reality. live in reality, ppl.
after he’s elected
what?
what don’t you understand about my statement?
Re-elected, of course.
You consent to all these issues with your vote for Dems. I on the other hand will express democracy by voting for a candidate that opposes this: Jill Stein.
you mean to tell me you’re going to vote for jill stein in november? what state do you live in? it better not be a battle ground state
Absolutely, because she is the candidate of the largest party I agree with.
do you understand how american elections work? are you in a battleground state?
Biden or Trump winning is a major loss. Instead build a better party instead of complaining.
People should do that… After this election that is.
Biden or Trump winning is a major loss.
They aren’t equal. They’re both shit, but they aren’t equal. And I don’t know about you, but I’d rather keep my right to vote, which is under threat thanks to the likes of Trump.
Instead build a better party instead of complaining.
Not seeing anything you’ve built. All I see is you complaining about Biden and Trump.
If you want better, we need electoral reform. Our current system is mathematically biased against third parties.
RAVE act
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.
Exactly. Recidivism makes a lot more sense now.
Imagine if you had $30,000 of debt right after you get out of jail with zero contacts and social support.
Yeah of course you’re going to go back to what you were doing before, you have no other options that you’re aware of.
Fuck that system.
You also have a record which makes getting hired even more difficult.
“Here’s the opposite of a college degree for the same price”
A lot of the education programs in prison are equally vile. They have people learn a few skills or trades, then when they get out they learn it’s impossible to get a state license in that trade because they are felons.
My wife knows a guy who learned programming in prison. He was apparently extremely lucky in which one he was sent to. And I don’t mean like “was fortunate for how he was charged” no he got sent to the most recent “prison reform” prison. They never close or update the old ones, just use prison reform as a justification to build a new one.
It’s not rehabilitation, it’s slavery with extra steps
The amendment banning slavery says you can still enslave people if it’s to punish them for a crime
Prisons are largely privatized nowadays, creating a demand for prisoners as they profit off of the free labor they get from prisoners
Rehabilitation efforts in the modern penal system are largely non-existent, with people usually coming out more violent and criminal than they came in, even if it was a bullshit arrest.
Black people are incarcerated at higher rates and with harsher sentences than white people for the same crimes, they also tend to get found guilty on much weaker evidence than their white peers
If you think it’s a coincidence, I can’t help you
Were you responding to me specifically or just sharing this information in general?
I am talking to you, I’m just saying the system wasn’t designed this way out of stupidity, but malice.
Got it.
And it’s never going to change either. No politician would ever campaign on a platform of prison reform, few would even vote in favor of it. Imagine the attack ads “Jeff Jackson wants to let murders and rapists go free and work at your kid’s school. Jack Jefferson protects kids and is tough on criminals voting three time to
ensure growth of his investments in PrisonMegaCorpmake sure they rot in prison forever… I’m Jack Jefferson and I approve this message.”Prison reform can happen in the United States, and it can be used as a platform by Earnest politicians like Bernie Sanders or AOC.
Prison abuse and reform happened in other countries, and there isn’t any evidence for inherent American exceptionalism
People are people, so positive prison reforms can happen in the States too.
It would be nice if the prisoners could take class or earn a degree while in prison, at least when they get out they have a new skill or a degree so they have a better chance to get a job to pay off their prison debt.
In Finland low risk prisoners can even get (or keep) a job. They drive a loaner car from the prison to their job in the morning and then drive back to prison in the afternoon.
Oh here in America they have to hold a job. If they work really hard they may even make a few dollars a day
It all goes to the company store.
Well after they’re done shaking down your loved ones too. It’s ok together you can all theoretically scrape together enough to keep you fed
It’s actual the one instance where slavery is legal, and most prisoners are black because of obvious racial bias in the court system… I wonder if that’s a concidence…
As someone who’s lived in the US her life everytime I hear about other first world nations it sounds so idyllic that if you put it in a Utopian Future Sci-Fi novel I’d laugh and call it hopelessly optimistic and just incredibly naive about how humans work…
But… no… people outside of America actually live like this…
This is not a cry for help (It totally is, I hate it here)
But for real though, if America wasn’t a world power (at the expense of its citizens’ well-being) or if there were other world powers strong as or stronger than it that weren’t Russia or China, I would not be even slightly surprised if it offered amnesty to US Citizens fleeing Late Stage Capitalism, at this point it’d be morally justified…
The UN actually did surveys here and found that Americans (especially in rural areas) experience levels of poverty that said UN believed to only exist in the worst case scenarios of 3rd World Countries. The problem is THAT bad…
God I hope there’s an afterlife, that may be the only way any of us see true freedom… escaping reality itself.
Omg I can hear my parents now:
“Wait, I had to work and save and still not be able to afford an education?!?! I sHoUlD hAvE jUsT hElD uP a CoNvEnIeNcE sToRe.”
I agree with you, 100%, FWIW. I’m just imagining the asinine conversations we’re going to have to have with people who don’t understand that the world doesn’t revolve around them and they’re not the main character.
This is a standart in German prisons.
Do all the politicians sleep in prison?
What do you mean? I was talking about having education in prison.
You can, just not a degree specifically but you can get certifications and a ged in prison
I commented this elsewhere, but a lot of those certifications are not worth anything because if you are a felon you cannot get that state license.
You absolutely can still use those certifications and they are often the stepping stone to help you get your foot in the door in an industry. I used to work IT in corrections and while not everyone winds up making it, I’ve seen felons go on to make $40/hr doing welding.
I do not agree with the US when it comes to corrections at all and I think it is blatantly abused in order to incarcerate as many people as possible, but I will give credit where it is due, not ALL hope is lost if you get incarcerated
You can use some of them, but there are a few like a barber’s license (in some states) that cannot be used.
People spend their time thinking they are reinventing themselves in prison only to find out they cannot work in said field/trade.
That would happen if Rehabilitation was the goal, that is not the point of the private prison system, the point is to legalize slavery.
Nobody will convince me that two plus two isn’t four.
If the twos are very small, it might be a heavy three.
“It’s not like you can decide to not be incarcerated”
You can though…
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.)”
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.
I have to keep asking people not to compare American Capitalists to the Ferengi
The Ferengi have a rule book dictating the ways they are and aren’t allowed to rip you off, American Capitalists would call that level of honesty and integrity Far-Left Socialism
The Ferengi are also perfectly happy to break any and all of the rules if it means more profit - that’s probably one of the rules.
Most of the rules have a counter, opposite rule. IE, war is good for business, peace is good for business.
I think they’re “War is profitable” and “Peace is profitable”. Which I guess isn’t really contradictory. They’re profitable in different ways.
It’s literally “good for business” on both
You’re right. Still the same thing, good for business in different ways.
There’s nothing more dangerous than an honest business man.
Does being honest about being dishonest count? Probably.
Privatized prisons are an abomination.
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!!
Yeah that is totally crazy.
I’ve obviously heard from movies and stuff that you have to pay for your phone calls, but not once have I sienna depicted prisoners paying for their jail time and paying for the classes they take prison.
It’s totally insane
$12 for a 15 minute phone call, more if it’s considered long distance.
Let me guess - long distance is if it’s outside the prison? /s
You mean the prison forgives your prisoner debt if you make license plates?
What do you mean by your comment “I think it’s forgiven if you take the job making license plates at $2/hr sometimes $2/day”?
I’m missing something, because all of your comments are way out of context.
Were you trying to respond to somebody else initially?
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
You think this is bad, we recently had a high profile case in the UK finally overturn a law where people who were found to have been wrongfully imprisoned had fees deducted from their compensation to pay the prison service for their food and accommodation.
Imagine spending years of your life in prison on a false conviction and then finding out you have to pay the government for the privilege.
I am not surprised, as the UK is who taught the world the concept of ownership and financial enslavement. The US is the eager scion of such pedigree
hey, the uk has taught the world other things too
like how to make concentration camps
Don’t forget, the U.S. has had some fun lessons to teach others. Like there was that time when the U.S. taught Germany how to make gas chambers and use them on “lower races”.
hOmE oF ThE fReE
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.
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.
Not in the states. US prisons are exploitative first and punitive second.
There are, but the jobs available pay like $1 or 2 a day
So glad slavery got abolished*!
*terms and conditions apply
Shouldve shopped around for a prison within your means
