Why is Connecticut Charging Inmates a Daily Fee for Their Imprisonment?
The ACLU of Connecticut argues that the 1997 statute imposing a debt of $249 a day, or $90,885 annually, on inmates is part of the United States' history of systemic racism.
Landwebs
Two former inmates, Teresa Beatty and Michael Llorens, are challenging a Connecticut law that has, since 1997, allowed the state to impose a debt of $249 a day, or $90,885 annually, on inmates for each day of their incarceration, alleging it traps people like them in an oppressive debt cycle from which there is no escape, reports the Courthouse News Service. The statue claims this fee is meant to recoup the state’s expenditure in feeding and sheltering inmates.
Meanwhile, every state in the union except Hawaii allows for the collection of daily “pay-to-stay” fees, and all states make use of prison labor programs in which inmates are compelled to work public and private jobs for mere cents an hour, if they are paid at all. Beatty and Llorens, representing a putative class of over 30,000 other people, name Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont and Attorney General William Tong as defendants due to the power both individuals have over the state’s Department of Corrections, and seek to enjoin Lamont, as the state’s chief executive, from enforcing the statute, and Tong from filing collection actions against people who owe prison debt. The suit also aims to wipe out Beatty’s and Llorens’ current debt, which between the pair is over $356,000. The ACLU of Connecticut argues the 1997 statute is part of the United States’ history of systemic racism.
