I was completely surprised to read about paying for upgraded accommodations in jail in California. The idea that an individual with money could upgrade their living accommodations for a fee while poor people have to suffer in overcrowded jails is appalling. How can the US allow such a thing? Is there not equality under the law? While should one person be punished more severely than another just because they are poor?
In this IHT story, they talk about people paying $82 a day to get a special comfortable cell and have access to an ipod or computer while in 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.
What is the US coming to? I am realizing more and more everyday, that the America I thought I knew, the America I read about in books, the America that I grew up in, is not that same America today. Justice is about money.
1 comment so far ↓
Wow, this is ridiculous. It sounds like something that’s endemic in the third world, but it’s happening in the US. Just like the bail system in the US, where the rich walk free (even if they are guilty) until trial and can then flee prosecution but the poor must rot in jail, even if innocent. To add insult to injury, the rich get comfortable accomodations such as the use of a computer and iPod. Things have gone too far. This is just depressing.
Just imagine if someday prisons were outsourced to India or Mexico and prisoners were sent there where the guards would be paid shit wages and the rich would have an even easier time bribing their way into luxury, while the poor would be eating rotten food. Do you think that is far away or far off? The fact that I brought it up means that someone else has probably already thought of it. I wouldn’t be surprised. Just think of it.. American prisoners housed in Mexican jails just across the border in the frontera. Horrid conditions (unless you are rich). Yeah, it sounds way out there, but give it about 20 years.
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