The Arizona legislature has passed legislation that will now allow prisons to charge $25 for people to visit their family and friends in prison. It is a remarkably cruel law since many of these visitors are coming from low income families and have to travel great distances. Yet, legislators are pointing out that they originally wanted to charge babies and children as well but decided to be nice guys.
The fee is being justified as a one-time “background check fee” for visitors, but staffers admit that it is an effort to increase revenue at the expense of these families. Wendy Baldo, chief of staff for the Arizona Senate, confirmed that they “were trying to cut the budget and think of ways that could help get some services for the Department of Corrections.”
Prison visitation has an extremely positive impact on inmates both psychologically and socially. It maintains and strengthens family bonds that will be needed to keep them from recidivism and can weaken the hold of gangs and other bad influences. Now the state is going to tell tell families on assistance that in order to see their loved ones, each adult will have to fork over $25. The article below also details how people have had difficulty paying the fee in advance. Visiting a loved one can be a terribly traumatic experience for a family. Yet, Arizona will now be there to get its cut.
As someone who has worked in prisons for decades, I find this absolutely appalling. From the beginning of correctional systems, the one right that virtually all societies have afforded inmates has been visitation. To now charge for the right to visit is gratuitous and cruel.
Source: NY Times
In the 60’s LBJ came up with “The War on Poverty” only to have it destroyed by the Viet Nam War that drained away the money. Today we have a different war going a “War of Impoverishment” meant to return this country to the feudal age, with a nobility made up of Corporate Executives and scions of inherited wealth. There are different “fronts” upon which this general war is fought.
They jail as many as possible through their “War on (low-level) Drugs (users)” and “War on Minorities”.
Export jobs in their “War on The Middle-Class”:
Ensure no worker representation in their “War on Unions”.
Destroy small business ventures in their “Big Box Store War” and ensure the result with their “War on (US) Tariffs”.
Exempt the Rich and Rich Corporations in their “War on Taxes”.
Impose serfdom in their “War on Social Security, Medicare and Health Care”.
Restrict voter rights and ensure money buys elections in their “War on Democracy”.
And on many other fronts to numerous to enumerate. The most pathetic part of this is if was at its’ bottom merely greed that motivates them, we could understand it in economic terms alone. However, it is more than greed that motivates the Koch’s, Mars Family, Trumps, Bush’s and others. It is their gut knowledge that they would have been failures in this world if not for inheritance, their inability to accept their mediocrity and
their need to deny it by lowering the living standards of everyone else, to make themselves feel special.
Mespo,
that is an interesting anology that you make. The poor are now being chastised for not making enough money to pay Federal taxes at the same time countless corporations are paying little or no Federal taxes on profits in the Billions. The Right is recreating the poll tax by forcing people to purchase state ID’s in order to register to vote. I think it is a correct anology.
“Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.”
At which point Jesus was beaned in the head with a large rock.
He looked out into the crowd and said, “You know mother, sometimes you really piss me off!”
GEO Group has annual revenues of $1.7 billion dollars. Doesn’t that cover background checks and maintenance? Ha, I smell Dick Cheney.
A CCA run facility in Leflore County, MS where I had recently visited an inmate given lwop at age 14, was nothing more than a series of decrepit shacks; a big warehouse at the end of a dirt road used to hold people the cheapest way possible. Grim, depressing, dirty, damp, nightmarish place. It could have been an abandoned hog farm except for the letters CCA spray-painted on a piece of plywood above a gate. Maintenance? What maintenance? There was no grass, no lobby, no paved parking lot or road, visitation room had nothing but vending machines, a microwave, plastic lawn chairs and Formica tables.
I made a promise to myself upon leaving that morbid place that I would not let this now 22 year old, WRONGLY CONVICTED CHILD die in that place. I can afford to pay a visitation fee, but most of the families I’ve encountered first at Walnut Grove and now at this hellhole, can not. Most inmates can’t even afford to make a phone call home due to the high cost of between $8 and $17 per call. That’s why cell phones are so popular among inmates, so they can talk to their families, not so they can order hits on gang members. Most inmates just want to talk to their loved ones. With the price of gas it’s hard for families to afford a visit to these facilities located in the middle of nowhere, let alone pay extra fees.
Why are there so many imprisoned in this country? Why are most of them African American and poor? Why are the sentences so LONG!? Sixty years for a drug offense, with no victim? So much potential being warehoused in this country. At what cost? Certainly CCA, GEO are mining gold on the backs of people who have made mistakes, human beings, not hogs.
Nothing suprises me in Arizona or in Mississippi where justice is a game, most effectively played by the wealthy and powerful.
“I also love hearing all you bleeding-heart shitbag libs whining about it. Get a life.”
Nightsky,
Keep believing until one day the impossible happens and you get arrested for a crime you’re innocent of and you can’t make bail. Then someone on the outside who thinks like you, will be calling you and your family shitbags. Let hw who is without sin cast the first stone.
Jim Crow is alive and well, and visiting his mischief on the newest discrimiated class, the poor.
Nightsky, Is that projection?
I love it! Make all the shitbag family members pay to visit their shitbag criminal family members. Perfect!
I also love hearing all you bleeding-heart shitbag libs whining about it. Get a life..
a holes
they deserve every prison riot they get
as far as not buying anything from arizona, what can you do, go to walmart and pour round-up on all their cacti?
Great clip Woosty!
Jerry,’
Every state has stupid laws, but that does not make this extortion attempt by Arizona any less repugnant.
Just kill everyone convicted of an indictable offence. Do away with prisons entirely. Do the crime, you die.
A “final solution” to the criminal problem.
That’s where we are heading anyway. Lets “just do it”. +5 points if you know who said that.
*this comment is #sarcasm in case you did not get it.
I think I remember this being the way they did in the movie Midnight Express.
Inmate Reimbursement Strategies:
Start reading at the bottom of the page.
http://books.google.com/books?id=Ela5giWVucUC&pg=PA121#v=onepage&q&f=false
I know. I know. The answer is the same as always. Just tax the rich.
This is the kind of thing you expect to go on in a third world-country; paying a bribe to get to see your incarcerated relative or friend.
jerry,
Ohio has some stupid laws too:
-No one may be arrested on Sunday or on the Fourth of July.
-If someone loses their pet tiger, they must notify authorities within one hour.
-It is against the law for a woman to wear patent leather shoes in public. (Allegedly, this is to prevent men from seeing up the woman’s skirt in the reflection of the shoes.)
– It is against the law for an Ohio grocery store to sell corn flakes on Sunday.
-It is illegal to roller skate without first notifying the police.
-It is illegal to throw a snake at anyone. (Apparently, this was a problem at one time.)
But Arizona’s ability to codify stupidity is indeed special.
I dont like this law nor the immigration law they tried. But there are prisons all over this country that restrict visitation rights as a form of punishment on unruly prisoners (including in ‘liberal’ wisconsin). So this statement is just silly…
“From the beginning of correctional systems, the one right that virtually all societies have afforded inmates has been visitation.”
Let’s stop the boring Arizona bashing. B/c of 2 stupid laws everyone ignorantly jumps on the bandwagon. i can give you ass-backwards stupid laws that are passed in all 50 states and by the federal govt.
Arizona is an incredibly beautiful state that is a whole lot freer than most of the states i have lived. And if my job afforded it, would move back in a second.