Rent-a-Cell

 

“I’m about to be homeless… I just don’t think it’s right, because I feel I already paid

my debt to society. I just don’t think it’s fair for me to be paying twice.”

58-year-old Connecticut inmate, Theresa Beatty, being required to pay for her 2 ½ years of incarceration… 2 decades after release.

The entire country is dealing with the bumbling Federal Reserve, belatedly responding to inflationary pressures by continuing to raise interest rates. Despite the labor shortage, companies like Google are already instituting wage freezes and perk cutbacks in anticipation of a more pronounced period of stagflation. The Fed does not care. One of the results of that agency’s actions has been a doubling (and up) in mortgage rates, resulting in an increase in homeowners, wanting to sell, pulling back. Prices continue to fall, but more people are realizing that renting is their only real option. Unfortunately, so many people flooding the rental market has driven rents through the stratosphere, particularly in major tech/financial cities where the “educated” jobs are. Assuming you can even find available rentals at any price.

For those entering or recently having enter that job market, for those who benefited from now-expired COVID rent deferments facing eviction, the news is anything but good. Particularly in these job centers, renters are facing the biggest “renter wage gap” – the difference between what the typical worker can afford and average rental costs – in recent memory. For those at the bottom of the economic ladder, the reality is much worse, with many facing insolvency and homelessness. But there is a class of individuals facing an entirely difference form of horrific “rental costs” that they never expected: even years after release from prison, many ex-inmates facing a state invoice for the cost of their incarceration. States don’t go after everyone, but…

As reported in the September 6th Associated Press, “When [Theresa Beatty’s (quoted above)] mother died two years ago, the state of Connecticut put a lien on the Stamford home she and her siblings inherited. It said she owed $83,762 to cover the cost of her 2½-year imprisonment for drug crimes [at $249/day]… Now, she’s afraid she’ll have to sell her home of 51 years, where she lives with two adult children, a grandchild and her disabled brother…

“All but two states have so-called pay-to-stay laws that make prisoners pay for their time behind bars, though not every state actually pursues people for the money. Supporters say the collections are a legitimate way for states to recoup millions of taxpayer dollars spent on prisons and jails.

“Critics say it’s an unfair second penalty that hinders rehabilitation by putting former inmates in debt for life. Efforts have been underway in some places to scale back or eliminate such policies… Two states — Illinois and New Hampshire — have repealed their laws since 2019… Connecticut also overhauled its statute this year, keeping it in place only for the most serious crimes, such as murder, and exempting prisoners from having to pay the first $50,000 of their incarceration costs.

“Under the revised law, about 98% of Connecticut inmates no longer have to pay any of the costs of their incarceration after they get out, said state Rep. Steve Stafstrom, a Bridgeport Democrat and a sponsor of the repeal legislation.” But inmates across the land still do. How many people facing a felony conviction are aware of this little cost when they enter a plea bargain? Beatty is at least challenging the law in court.

One of the reasons these laws are anything but uniformly enforced is that a prison conviction usually destroys the ability of ex-felons to make a decent living. Recidivism is often the result of ex-inmates facing rejection from prospective employers… and believing that resorting to criminal activity is their only economic choice. Or face desperate homelessness. Do inmates know that part of their sentence just may be the obligation to pay retroactive rent? Most do not. That the law is not uniformly applied, for obvious reasons, only exacerbates the unfairness.

“‘It just drags you back to despair,’ said Beatty, who has had other brushes with the law over drug possession since her release from jail but has also become a certified nursing assistant. ‘That’s where I feel like I’m at. ... All of this work and it feels like I’ve done it in vain.’

“Pay-to-stay laws were put in place in many areas during the tough-on-crime era of the 1980s and ’90s, said Brittany Friedman, an assistant professor of sociology at USC who is leading a study of the practice… As prison populations ballooned, Friedman said, policymakers questioned how to pay for incarceration costs. ‘So, instead of raising taxes, the solution was to shift the cost burden from the state and the taxpayers onto the incarcerated.’

“Laws vary from state to state. Many, like Connecticut, go after inmates for the cost of incarceration only if they come into money after leaving prison. A few, such as North Carolina, have laws on the books but almost never use them, Friedman said.” Much like the failed “three strikes” laws now being repealed across the land, the unfairness is beyond obvious. A kind of “double jeopardy” I suspect few taxpayers/legislators anticipated or understood when these laws were passed.

I’m Peter Dekom, and more than the invoiced inmate are paying twice; taxpayers are paying twice from the resulting recidivism and social welfare costs that are also a result of such statutes.