Loftin: Jail fee for prisoners sounds good, but isn't

photo A jailer turns a lock at the Hamilton County Jail.

Inmates released from Hamilton County's workhouse might assume they've satisfied their debt to society with their incarceration.

Unfortunately, they're wrong.

They soon learn they owe an accumulated daily "jail fee" that former County Mayor Claude Ramsey says was put in place to "recoup some of the cost of keeping prisoners who by their actions have landed" behind bars.

Hamilton County commissioners adopted a daily $8 fee applicable to workhouse (and some jail) inmates in 1983. It increased to $28 two years later, to $51 in 2008 and to $56 in 2011. (The state reimburses Hamilton County less per day for felons it houses.)

Mathematics explains the problem for ex-inmates. A three-month workhouse stay translates to over $5,000 in fees for misdemeanor convictions. An 11-month, 29-day sentence (the maximum workhouse misdemeanor penalty) tallies to more than $20,000.

It's hard to calculate precisely the total jail fees debt but it exceeds $50 million, due mostly to the failure of former Criminal Court Clerk Gwen Tidwell's predecessors to collect them. After her 1994 election, she did establish an in-house collection program.

Fast forward to 2013, when the County Commission finally approved her proposal to hire two collection agencies. Come Jan. 1, they will be allowed to include their commissions -- about 17 and 21 percent, respectively -- to ex-inmates' debt. Adding that 21 percent commission would raise the $5,000 debt cited above by more than $1,000. If the percentage is applied to the balance after every payment, as is done with credit cards, the problem becomes worse.

Despite those efforts, most of the debt is likely uncollectible. An ex-inmate with a job might earn enough for his family's basic needs but not enough to pay fees, potentially a high percentage of household debt. Even so, the collected amounts are unimpressive relative to the debt. In the fiscal year that ended June 30, the Criminal Court clerk collected $451,549 in jail fees. But indebtedness increases every time a workhouse inmate is released.

The impact of the accumulating fees is similar to the plight of persons indebted to payday lenders, those exemplars of rapacious capitalism. And though the state gives former inmates a year to begin debt payments, if they miss three monthly payments they can lose their driver's license. That can jeopardize their job.

The program seems flawed for three reasons: the inability of most ex-inmates to pay the debt; the exponential increase of the debt as more people are locked up, thus making the problem worse if not absurd, and the fact that judges can waive a person's debt. That suggests the program is collapsing of its own weight and raises a question: Why then impose the fee?

Most inmates have long paid county property taxes indirectly through their rent. And lower income people pay more proportionately in regressive state and local sales taxes, now nearly 10 percent here. County government is obliged to fund corrections to punish lawbreakers. Imposing onerous jail fee debts on former inmates while allowing the addition of collection agencies' commission is probably good politics. The late satirist Brother Dave Gardner had a pertinent comment: "I believe if a man is down, kick him! If he survives, he can rise above it."'

Our community can help restore families when an inmate is released from incarceration. That should mean protesting programs that lock ex-inmates' families into poverty. The Old and New Testaments warn against abusing the poor, which suggests a valuable principle: compassion should be apolitical.

Michael Loftin is a former editorial page editor of The Times.

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