Comments about ‘'Pay to stay' at the Purgatory Jail’

ALL jails should be "pay to stay". There should be chores, rules, work etc. in jails and prisons. It could be any kind of "work", depending on the prisoner and the jail--but "something" should be required of prisoners. Reading books, filling out forms, writing reports, exercising. Even genealogy, like at the Utah State Prison. If it could be some actual job, all the better. But chores at the very least.

How do you expect most to pay? Criminals. Just out of jail. No job, no money, no good prospects? Perfect setup to go out and rob someone to get the money.

"Offset the costs?" Aren't the county jails already getting 30K/year/person from the state? Sounds to me like they're running the jail as a profit making enterprise. Hire out some of those inmates to the city to clean up the roads, highways and parks and you have a nice business model. Now all you need to do is make sure you arrest enough people..

BRAVO! Jails get money from the State to help OFFSET the cost of incarcerated inmates that is our tax dollars! If we can lower the costs than we can lower our tax burden and I think everyone is for lowering taxes. Samson, I suspect from your comments that you have been a "guest" in the system at some point. I was the Budget Director for a large jail on the East coast and I've NEVER seen any jail come close to making a profit. We instituted a pay to stay program as well as a booking fee and it worked great! What ever happened to paying for a life of crime?

thats stupid iam a prisoner at purgatory and if i have to pay all that money for my stay how am i goin to pay for all the other stuff i have to pay for probation so i dont get locked up its a lose lose situation for me im goin to need a loan to pay for all this court stuff how do i do that it dosent make sence im working for nothing!

How about not locking people up for minuscule offenses. Taking away someones freedom is supposed to be reserved for people who are legitimate threats to society and therefore loose that right. Not paying a no head light ticket does not constitute being a threat to society and incarceration should not be used as a means of extortion, there are debt collection actions for that. Almost 20% of people booked into Utah county jail are there for failure to make a fine payment of some kind. That would be cutting costs by 1/5 just by actually obeying the constitution instead of taking this hard line stance that in real life has no possibility of producing the desired outcome. It is all politics not results that motivates this.