Pay To Stay” Prison Program A Miserable Failure
In the counties of Butler and Hamilton, Ohio, the sheriff’s departments attempted to collect money from inmates to pay for the cost of their stay at jail. A miserable failure, the program was halted a few weeks ago after it cost taxpayers $69,000 to settle a federal lawsuit. The state auditor put an end to the program because it wasn’t generating any revenue.
Despite this fact, these counties are discussing reviving the program through collecting booking fees. Financial analysts remain dubious. Even in the best case scenarios, the policy may not be lucrative at all; most prisoners that end up in jail have no money.
Lawsuits were the issue that stopped the program in the first place. An Ohio prison nearby originally began charging booking fees at a hundred dollars and an additional $67.77 daily charge for every day held. But federal lawsuits against Hamilton and Butler counties started the end to “pay to stay” programs. The major issue at hand was determining who had to pay the fee.
Ohio law allows a county to charge inmates for room and board, medical and dental treatment, property damage and a onetime booking fee. Prisoners must be billed at the end of their stay, but the key provision of the law is that convicted inmates only could be charged. The District Judge said that it was unconstitutional to take these fines from inmates who were not yet convicted.
Hamilton County was taken to court in 2000 and was ordered to return around one million dollars in prison fees and to pay $150,000 for an educational program for inmates. In 2001, Butler County was also sued. By 2003, the grand total of money that was returned to settle litigation was $63,846 to 2,431 prisoners. Additionally, the county was ordered to pay a $5,000 donation to the Legal aid Society after officials did not add the agreed upon ten percent interest on refund checks.
Although the plan to charge pay to stay fees to prisoners has failed, and has cost taxpayers more money than the program is worth, the Sheriff’s department still looks to extract more money from the jail. Charging booking fees, and taking in out of state prisoners are current considerations.
Mallory Megan works for Rapid Recovery Solution, a medical debt collection agency. Having trouble collecting money from small claims? collection agencies can help.
Collection Agency Tries A Different Approach In Poor Economy
The bill collections industry’s tactics may be taking a turn for the….better? Keeping in mind the amount of recent lawsuits against debt collection agencies, ACA International, the biggest trade group of professional creditors and collectors, says more and more collection agencies are working towards training collectors to take a more of an empathetic position.
Empathy may just be the plan of action that can turn the industry around. A large number of people who owe money are being called by various collections agencies, and if they do obtain money, they are not going to want to give it to the aggressive threatening collector, they will give it to the person they can work with.
As agencies are perfecting training courses to include advice on how to be gentler with consumers, there will be a change of focus that includes being put on coaching, mentoring and counseling debtors, rather than aggressively threatening them. Trainees are urged to reflect on their personal experiences with collectors or someone that they know has dealt with them.
One recent trend has been to suggest that debtors speak with their parents or grandparents about taking out a loan against their life insurance policies or reverse mortgage against their house. The collectors who practice this technique claim that our grandparents remember the Great Depression. They may not want this generation to feel that kind of pain and may be more apt to take a loan against the life retirement account or the life insurance policy.
Collectors who practice this philosophy think that it is in actuality a positive thing. They think that it doesn’t hurt anyone. If a person borrows against life insurance it may be preferable to borrowing against a 401(k) or a retirement plan. This is because the person will be counting on that money to survive.
Wrong or right, it would do the collections industry some good to evaluate its situation, and look for new innovative ways to collect in a suffering economy.
Mallory Megan works for a debt collection agency. She also composes articles on business and finance, consumer spending and collection agencies. Don’t reprint this exact article. Instead, reprint a free unique content version of this same article.