Two single beds with semi-private bathroom. Shared shower and gym facilities. A balcony room that overlooks a spacious common area with tables and television. No safe in the room, and sunlight is minimal. Free parking.
Meals and outfit included in $10 nightly fee. Book and movie rentals available. Guests may be subject to strip search.
If the accommodations don’t sound appealing, that’s because it’s a cell inside the Westmoreland County Prison. Inmates who have been sentenced in criminal cases are charged the fee to be locked up in the Hempfield facility.
Few pay it, however. And the county does little to collect the debt.
Since the fee was implemented in 2001, charges have climbed to $22 million. The jail has collected nearly $3 million, said Warden John Walton.
“We thought about raising it,” Walton said. “When you got $19 million that’s owed, the ones that are giving are going to give anyway. You don’t want to burden them so that they don’t want to pay it.”
To charge, or not
Across Pennsylvania, 26 county jails charge a room and board fee, according to statistics available on the state prison website.
Allegheny, Armstrong and Indiana jails are among 34 that don’t, according to statistics. Information about whether the remaining counties charge a fee was not available in the statistics. Allegheny County Jail officials have never considered charging inmates to stay there, spokeswoman Amie Downs said.
Fees at most jails that charge them are between $10 and $20, including in Butler and Somerset counties. The state report shows a $65 charge for the Lawrence County jail, but Warden Brian Covert said that is the amount the state pays the facility to house parole violators, not a room and board fee for inmates.
The New Castle jail has no such fee, he said.
Most states in the country allow such fees, but how the practice is implemented varies, according to the Brennan Center for Justice.
Some counties in Wisconsin charge room and board fees, with an average of $13 per day, according to Wisconsin Watch. New Hampshire’s governor last year repealed a law that allowed the state to sue people for the costs of their incarceration.
Westmoreland inmates are charged the daily room and board rate after they are sentenced. The amount is calculated for the number of days a person has been in the jail, regardless of whether they were being held on bail pretrial or actually serving the sentence.
The fee is not assessed on inmates who are sentenced to probation, acquitted or have their cases dropped or dismissed.
The average length of stay in a county jail in 2017 was about 26 days, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics. A defendant sentenced to 30 days in the Westmoreland County Prison would get a $300 bill.
The longest sentence for a county jail is up to two years less a day, or a price tag of $7,290.
Under Westmoreland County’s 5% hotel tax, a $200 hotel room would carry a $10 nightly fee. According to an online search, there isn’t a single $200 hotel room in the county.
The jail sends a bill and payment schedule after the person has been released and, aside from a couple of reminder letters, that’s it.
Some faithful payers regularly send whatever they can, Walton said. The jail collected $168,000 in 2018 and $185,735 the year before.
But the jail doesn’t go after people for payment or enlist help of collections agencies, Walton said.
However, officials can collect unpaid room and board fees if a person who owes returns to the jail, he said. In those cases, jail officials take any cash the person has on them to put toward their bill.
Then, half of any money put into the inmate’s account is taken by the jail, Walton said. If the inmate owes money to the county Clerk of Courts office, the confiscated amount is split — 60% to their room and board bill and 40% toward case-related fees, fines or restitution. About $613,000 was directed to the Clerk of Courts office from 2013-18 through that method, he said.
Harmful debt
Charging a fee to be locked up can be harmful to someone leaving jail who has limited employment opportunities and may face other issues, such as finding a place to live, said Hayden Nelson-Major, Independence Fund fellow at the ACLU of Pennsylvania.
The room and board fees “add on another significant amount of debt when someone’s coming out of jail,” she said.
People who get caught up in the criminal justice system are assessed fees at practically every turn, Nelson-Major said.
“Increasingly, the legal system and prison system are turning toward defendants and inmates to fund their operations,” she said.
In 2019, the Westmoreland County Clerk of Courts office collected $810,674 from defendants to put into the county’s coffers.
The more in debt and less job prospects people have, it becomes more challenging to them to become law-abiding citizens, she said. The average 2014 income for a man at the time of arrest is $19,000, according to the Prison Policy Initiative. An average woman made just under $14,000 prior to incarceration.
Pennsylvania law allows jails to charge room and board fees to work release or weekend inmates, but they don’t have the authority to charge all inmates daily, Nelson-Major said. The majority of Pennsylvania’s jails charge work release inmates room and board.
In Westmoreland County, where officials had to raise property taxes by 2.4% for 2020, any additional income would be helpful. The $341 million budget relied on a $10 million loan to pay the bills at the start of the year and the county was projected to end 2020 with $267,000 remaining in a surplus fund.
The money collected by the jail for room and board fees goes into the county’s general fund. But officials can’t count on the income.
“It’s a bonus if we get anything,” Walton said.
Renatta Signorini is a Tribune-Review staff writer. You can contact Renatta at 724-837-5374, rsignorini@triblive.com or via Twitter .
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