Get Out of Jail, Sort of, but Not for Free

Yesterday's New York Times had an article about a disturbing penalogical trend that, at the moment, seems confined to California - pay-to-stay jails. With the right connections and a little bit of money (cash only, the article notes, just like bribes!) you can serve your time in a private correctional facility rather than the county jail:

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.

Many of the overnighters are granted work furlough, enabling them to do most of their time on the job, returning to the jail simply to go to bed (often following a strip search, which granted is not so five-star).

The clients usually share a cell, but otherwise mix little with the ordinary nonpaying inmates, who tend to be people arrested and awaiting arraignment, or federal prisoners on trial or awaiting deportation and simply passing through.

Or they tend to be POOR! For fuck's sake, I'm not naive enough to think that class plays no role in the criminal justice system. I'm a public defender, after all. But can we all agree that once you get a ticket to the pokey, money shouldn't play into it? It's one thing to segregate inmates based on legitimate penalogical interests (criminal history, nature of the offender, etc.). It's a whole different kettle of fish to let the better off make their stays more comfortable simply because they can.

PS: Frank Pasqualle over at Concurring Opinions has some similar thoughts on the issue.