CA jails offer cell upgrades for prisoners with cash

[babylonsister]

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/29/us/29jail.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin

For $82 a Day, Booking a Cell in a 5-Star Jail


By JENNIFER STEINHAUER
Published: April 29, 2007

SANTA ANA, Calif., April 25 — Anyone convicted of a crime knows a debt to society often must be paid in jail. But a slice of Californians willing to supplement that debt with cash (no personal checks, please) are finding that the time can be almost bearable.

For offenders whose crimes are usually relatively minor (carjackers should not bother) and whose bank accounts remain lofty, a dozen or so city jails across the state offer pay-to-stay upgrades. Theirs are a clean, quiet, if not exactly recherché alternative to the standard county jails, where the walls are bars, the fellow inmates are hardened and privileges are few.

Many of the self-pay jails operate like the secret velvet-roped nightclubs of the corrections world. You have to be in the know to even apply for entry, and even if the court approves your sentence there, jail administrators can operate like bouncers, rejecting anyone they wish.

more...

[Alexander]

1. Justice is now a joke in the USA.

How blatant can you get? You can now literally BUY your way out of prison.

[liberalnurse]

2. I don't support this option.

All needs to be equal. Security is the focus, nothing more, nothing less.

[babylonsister]

3. Nor do I, but money is not only talking, but yelling loudly. nt

[liberalnurse]

5. A typical benefactor of such an option

would be a sexual offender. Bail is usually cash bond starting from $100,000 and up... They typically have jobs, money in the bank; they have to wait about a year before going to trial. So, they get their sick, in denial, "keep the family secret a secret" family members to put lots money on their commissary books.

I want "No Frills" for these predators!

[Gormy Cuss]

4. Oh crap. Another story illustrating how Californian innovations are sometimes just nuts.

Either all those incarcerated for minor offenses are offered the same amenities, or none of them should be. There is a good case for having separate, less stark jails for people who aren't violent offenders but there's a better case for not jailing them in the first place. Letting the well heeled brats upgrade is mind-numbingly stupid thinking, IMO.

[TahitiNut]

15. Wow! Bashing California and us 'nuts' both? As a 'nut' who's been Californicated ..

.. I object. :grr:

* This has been a public service posting on behalf of the International Association of Fruits & Nuts.

[Gormy Cuss]

19. Yeah, easy for you to object now that you no longer live here.

:P

[hootinholler]

22. You forgot Flakes.

Other than that, a fair assessment.

-Hoot

[TahitiNut]

23. Flakes come from western Michigan.

:rofl: Battle Creek, I think.

[stillcool]

6. I'm getting too old for this shit...

I don't know how much further my mind can expand.

For roughly $75 to $127 a day, these convicts — who are known in the self-pay parlance as “clients” — get a small cell behind a regular door, distance of some amplitude from violent offenders and, in some cases, the right to bring an iPod or computer on which to compose a novel, or perhaps a song.
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The pay-to-stay programs have existed for years, but recently attracted some attention when prosecutors balked at a jail in Fullerton that they said would offer computer and cellphone use to George Jaramillo, a former Orange County assistant sheriff who pleaded no contest to perjury and misuse of public funds, including the unauthorized use of a county helicopter. Mr. Jaramillo was booked into the self-pay program in Montebello, near Los Angeles, instead.

“We certainly didn’t envision a jail with cellphone and laptop capabilities where his family could bring him three hot meals,” said Susan Kang Schroeder, the public affairs counsel for the Orange County district attorney. “We felt that the use of the computer was part of the instrumentality of his crime, and that is another reason we objected to that.”
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Most of the programs — which offer 10 to 30 beds — stay full enough that marketing is not necessary, though that was not always the case. The Pasadena jail, for instance, tried to create a little buzz for its program when it was started in the early 1990s.

“Our sales pitch at the time was, ‘Bad things happen to good people,’ ” said Janet Givens, a spokeswoman for the Pasadena Police Department. Jail representatives used Rotary Clubs and other such venues as their potential marketplace for “fee-paying inmate workers” who are charged $127 a day (payment upfront required).

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/29/us/29jail.html?_r=2&hp&oref=slogin&oref=slogin

[Selatius]

7. No, the ideal purpose of prisons is to reform, not pamper.

Keep them safe, austere, and focused on the goal of reforming. Unfortunately, prisons in America are far away from that ideal, but this is a step in the wrong direction.

White collar criminals should not get privileges above and beyond everybody else in prison.

[valerief]

8. I'd rather have habeas corpus over a better jail cell. nt

[Old and In the Way]

9. Absolutely the wrong approach.

Start getting rid of BS sentences that don't require the person to be locked up. That would free up a lot of beds....and the industry overhead. I doubt 50% of the population is truly deserving to be behind bars.

[GCP]

10. And how is this different from the olden days

When your family had to bring food otherwise you'd starve in jail.
Unbelievable.

[SoCalDem]

11. Shit.. I can get you a room for less than that in Vegas..

:rofl:

[proud patriot]

12. Good Grief

x(

[Warren DeMontague]

13. The way to ease overcrowding in the prison system

is to stop locking up millions and millions of non-violent drug offenders.

[pitohui]

16. these are DUI offenders according to the article

do you think that they are suddenly going to stop jailing DUI offenders? do you think it does good to the community for DUI offenders in jail for 10 days or so to become infected w. a contagious disease or even to be raped and bring back HIV/AIDS to their family or community? in texas, such as dallas, minor offenders are getting MRSA and bringing this back to the community


i don't see in the article where drug offenders are being offered this, are non violent drug offenders even arrested in california? they are talking about people paying to be kept separate from GANGS, what's happening here is the person who has committed a relatively minor crime or a non-violent crime is then having to pay a high price to keep from being prey of the violent criminals, seems to me it's the short term offender who is being robbed here but the alternative is that they would be perfectly happy to see the DUI or other small time offender infected and killed


really this is out and out extortion of the person who is smaller, or more frail, or not of a class where they have learned to physically defend themselves

it's theft but if we just sit on our hands and say "well, free the pot smokers" this doesn't address the issue of people who should be in jail for a crime like DUI but who don't deserve to be raped or executed for it

[w4rma]

18. Noone should be raped in jail. Not even the rapists.

And those are only the wealthy DUI offenders. The poor and middle class ones get regular prison.

This is another way for the wealthy to insulate themselves from regular Americans.

[Warren DeMontague]

21. Not speaking to the specifics of this situation, the larger issue is driven by overcrowding.

Overcrowding is driven by the fact that fully half the folks in prison are non-violent drug offenders.

And yes, that applies to California, too.

But I agree with you- jail time shouldn't be a sentence to assault, rape, illness or death. If the prisons weren't so crowded, I suspect it would be more realistic to expect them to be safe as well.

With something like DUI, I'm of two minds- for one, I was young and an idiot once, myself. But I also had a very good friend killed by a drunk driver. People need to see it for the serious crime it is, because it endangers everyone else on the road. I'm not sure what the best way to communicate the gravity of that is to people, however.

Hell, maybe the answer is to get the technology to take us to a place where computers do all our driving for us. That was my answer back in my drinking days. Then you could go wherever, as drunk as you want.

[williesgirl]

14. This is disgusting. Not on do the wealthy get better legal representation, now

they can stay at a 5-star jail as well? This shit needs to be stopped before it catches on elsewhere. recommended

[w4rma]

17. This is bad. (nt)

[WinkyDink]

20. ALL prosecutions are governmental. THUS, NO prisons should be private!!

How about private trials, too?

Jack Abramoff might like to pay for his own jury pool.

[Nye Bevan]

24. The California penal system is reverting to that of London in the 17th century

"Each of London's fourteen prisons had its different grades of accommodation, and which one a prisoner ended up in depended not on the nature of the offense he was charged with or the severity of the sentence but entirely on how much money ("garnish" was the technical term) he was prepared to lay out in bribes to gaolers, keepers, tipstaffs and others. Life on the Master's Side could be as comfortable as life outside for those who had money: the inmate could eat and drink as he pleased, smoke whenever he had a mind, have his friends in for an evening's gambling, or a woman from the local brothel to warm his bed. He could even bribe a gaoler to escort him out of doors. On the Common Side, however, a penniless man might actually starve to death if he failed to secure relief, primarily obtained by begging through the grated prison windows. A riot in the King's Bench prison in 1620 was sparked when the Marshal walled up the window through which the inmates obtained food."

http://etext.virginia.edu/journals/EH/EH36/browner2.html