gaypriori:

so I heard this story on the radio yesterday:

and my immediate thought was “okay so if someone is acquitted the state is like ‘we shouldn’t have to cover the cost of their stay in the prison because they shouldn’t have been there in the first place” which is, of course, utterly fucked up.

but no… it’s worse than that…. it’s because pay-to-stay incarceration in the United States is a thing… as in it’s common practice for prison inmates to be charged for their stay in prison (https://truthout.org/articles/fighting-the-fees-that-force-prisoners-to-pay-for-their-incarceration/). This was news to me.

Fighting the Fees That Force Prisoners to Pay for Their Incarceration

''Pay-to-stay'' fees push the poor into debt.

Truthout

this is “we’re billing the guilty for their stay; the acquitted should have to pay us for their stay too”

so yeah not only does mass incarceration thrive off of prisoners’ free labor it also thrives off of prisons billing inmates like some sort of fucking Holiday Inn