Comment by qingcharles

3 years ago

When I first went to jail (for being poor) it was costing me $1.50/min to call my family.

Six years later, when I was still locked up, my mother was dying of cancer and I could only afford to call her for five minutes a day.

Illinois at least dropped the prices of its prison calls to 1¢/min.

Amazing that this bill includes the county jails. Often jail and prison regulations are totally separate and jails usually get the short end of the stick.

And remember, it is never the prisoners that pay for the calls. It is always the friends and family having to put money onto the phone or commissary accounts. Often a male prisoner has left behind a woman and children and they have lost their primary income, but now they are being burdened with paying for phone calls, hygiene products, clothing and food for their loved one too.

22 comments

qingcharles

Reply
q1w2  3 years ago

I'd love to hear the details of your situation.

When a judge sets bail bond (which is what you're referring to in your prior comments - yes I read back because I was curious), it is either to ensure the accused returns for trial, or they set it very high to keep them in jail because they are a significant flight-risk.

I suspect you being a UK citizen was a big factor there - but I'm very surprised that your case is taking TEN YEARS and that you've been in jail the majority of that time. How does that happen? Are you appealing a prior case outcome?

You also got 1.5 additional years for violating a court gag order on your own case? Is that right?

KennyBlanken  3 years ago

In case anyone else wants to "call BS" on this:

https://www.americanbar.org/groups/crsj/publications/human_r...

  • holbrad  3 years ago

    I'm sure there are examples of abuse.

    But I honestly don't see the problem in principle.

    If a court issues you a fine and you simply ignore it, that's not a situation society can just ignore. If you are truly unable to pay, that's more complicated, but should not just simply magically resolve you of responsibility.

    There has to be other measures to ensure that money is paid or an equivalent cost is beared. Garnishing wages being an obvious first step.

    (This is especially true if fines were to scale with income/wealth)

    • qingcharles  3 years ago

      All the people I was locked up with for "being poor" who were serving a sentence of conviction (as opposed to those in pretrial detention for inability to pay bond) were there because of child support payments.

      Basically what happens is that often the court makes a poor determination of how much a person can afford to pay each month, and when they can't make the payments they are jailed for contempt of court (for violating a court order). Often the first thing states do is take away the person's driver's license as a warning before jailing them. This makes them unable to get to/from work and usually results in their unemployment.

    • ExoticPearTree  3 years ago

      Somehow I don't think it is that hard for the judge to find out if you're really poor and can't pay or you don't want to pay and take reasonable action. Jailing people for being poor is catch 22 with people's lives.

      2 replies →

    • nemo44x  3 years ago

      I do agree that something needs to be extracted and it’s probably better to require community service than being locked up. If you can’t or won’t pay your debt to society through money then society can hire you to repay the debt.

dvektor  3 years ago

qingcharles I keep running into you in HN threads, I'm just gonna leave this here:

preston@unlockedlabs.org

hit me up sometime