Law Commons^™

Captive Markets, Leah A. Plunkett

Law Faculty Scholarship

Today, inmates in county jails nationwide are billed for some or all of the costs of their room-and-board behind bars. Statutes authorizing counties to implement these “pay-to-stay” programs are on the books in roughly 70% of states, yet the financial mechanism on which these programs typically rely is not well understood. Although the pay-to-stay obligation bears some resemblance to familiar citizen-state financial transactions — such as fines and penalties, restitution, taxes, and fees — it in fact usually belongs to a distinct model that this Article calls the “government-imposed-loan.” This Article provides an overview of the landscape of pay-to-stay programs …