When someone is arrested and charged, and sometimes convicted of a crime or misdemeanor, he or she can end up spending a considerable amount of time in municipal jails. Someone might stay a few hours or days, or weeks, sometimes up to a year in a jail depending on the charge or charges. The function of jails as opposed to prisons is to provide short-term incarceration. If you are awaiting a drunk and disorderly date in front of a judge, or have been convicted and given a relatively short sentence, you might stay in a local jail. Of course, there is a long history of these jails being used by our law enforcement and justice system as a way to prey upon and punish people who do not have the same financial means that others do.
WKRC in Indiana reports that Sheriff Rich Kelly has decided to begin charging up to $30 per day for the jail stays of Clinton County inmates convicted of felonies or misdemeanors. The fee would be charged to the inmate starting 72 hours into a stay, and according to Sheriff Kelly this is a win-win for fiscal conservatives. You see, by Kelly’s estimation, this will defer the costs from taxpayers, as "taking care of this facility has been on the backs of taxpayers," to the criminals themselves and also serve as a deterrent to those prisoners. "If it deterred one person from making a bad decision than it is worth it to me," Kelly stated.
It’s foolproof, except for the fact that if you are in jail because you were convicted of robbing someone or shoplifting you probably didn’t have the money one needs to avoid doing those things. That means you will either not pay this new jail tax and it will subsequently be put back on the taxpayer, or you will end up in jail for longer as you cannot pay your jail tax, thus accruing more jail time that the Indiana taxpayer will subsequently have to pay for. Republican math is proof that private education is not the solution to our country’s educational failures. To be fair to Kelly, inmates who make less than twice the federal poverty level will not be charged.
The war on low-level drugs has compounded jail use in our society and states like Indiana. Former Gov. Mike Pence made sure to push for stricter punishments on marijuana possession during his tenure. Creating scenarios that raise the recidivism rates in our country’s prisons and jails just leads to more inhumane treatment of Americans. Nothing in our country is more American than a conservative pushing for legislation that has been proven to fail, watching their proposal fail, and then moving into higher office while blaming the official left to clean up their failure.