Paying to upgrade your accommodations in prison

Paying to upgrade your accommodations in prison June 27, 2017

jail-27287_640

Convicted felons in California can often upgrade their prison cells–for a price.  For $100 a night, the cost of an inexpensive hotel, prisoners can serve their time in a city jail that will offer them a flat screen TV, new beds, and the use of a computer.  Not to mention less brutality.

Letting prisoners pay for improved conditions is not new.  In jolly olde England, those who could pay could be attended by their servants and fed haute cuisine, while lower class criminals rotted in the dismasted ships that served as “prison hulks.”  The nobility could stay in the palatial prisons of the Tower of London, until a courteous Executioner introduced them to Death, that great leveler.

But it’s strange to hear about such arrangements in a nation dedicated to equality before the Law.

Do you think this so-called “pay-to-stay” program is a legitimate way for the criminal justice system to save money on expensive incarcerations?  Or is it a two-tiered justice system favoring the wealthy?

Read about the details after the jump.

From ALYSIA SANTO, VICTORIA KIM AND ANNA FLAGG, Upgrade your jail cell – for a price: Some people convicted of serious crimes pay for better digs – Los Angeles Times:

Alan Wurtzel met Carole Markin on Match.com in 2010. On their first date, he took her to coffee. After their second date, he walked Markin to her door, followed her inside and, she said, forced her to perform oral sex.

Wurtzel later claimed the act was consensual, but in 2011 he pleaded no contest to sexual battery and was sentenced to a year in jail. Markin was disappointed in the short sentence, but she still believed a measure of justice would be served with her assailant locked behind bars at the Los Angeles County Jail.

Instead, Wurtzel, who also had been convicted of sexual battery in a previous case, found a better option: For $100 a night, he was permitted by the court to avoid county jail entirely. He did his time in Seal Beach’s small city jail, with amenities that included flat-screen TVs, a computer room and new beds. He served six months, at a cost of $18,250, according to jail records.

Markin learned about Wurtzel’s upgraded jail stay only recently, from a reporter. “I feel like, ‘Why did I go through this?’” she said.

In what is commonly called “pay-to-stay” or “private jail,” a constellation of small city jails — at least 26 of them in Los Angeles and Orange counties — open their doors to defendants who can afford the option. But what started out as an antidote to overcrowding has evolved into a two-tiered justice system that allows people convicted of serious crimes to buy their way into safer and more comfortable jail stays.

An analysis by the Marshall Project and the Los Angeles Times of the more than 3,500 people who served time in Southern California’s pay-to-stay programs from 2011 through 2015 found more than 160 participants who had been convicted of serious crimes including assault, robbery, domestic violence, battery, sexual assault, sexual abuse of children and possession of child pornography.

[Keep reading. . .]

Illustration from Pixabay, Creative Commons

"Which 24 hours-the faster one from when the earth revolved faster early in its existence ..."

Sasse’s “This Is My Body”
"God is unable to count 24 hours in the absence of the Sun?"

Sasse’s “This Is My Body”
"What!? Me overstate things!?"

Sasse’s “This Is My Body”
"The same spirit? The very worst way to understand much of scripture is with a ..."

Sasse’s “This Is My Body”

Browse Our Archives