Pay-to-stay (imprisonment) - Wikipedia
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Very weird that I am so old and have literally never heard this mentioned in a TV show or book or movie or anything.

In four out of five states, if you go to prison, you are literally paying for the time you spend there.

As you can guess, this results in crippling debt as soon as you’re released.

The county gets back a fraction of what they hold over your head the rest of your life until you commit suicide(or die naturally and peacefully with the sword of damocles hanging over your head).

$20-$80 a day according to Rutgers.

Counties apparently sue people and employ wage garnishment to get back the money that majority of people obviously cannot pay back.

https://www.rutgers.edu/news/states-unfairly-burdening-incarcerated-people-pay-stay-fees

  • aeronmelon@lemmy.worldEnglish
    1·
    8 months ago

    I left America over a decade ago due to a laundry list of grievances that I developed while having only ever lived in America.

    Once I started living in other countries, I finally developed context to compare my American life with. And it just made things look so much worse than I had previously thought.

    And now it feels like not a day can go by without learning some new awful truth about my former home.

      • aeronmelon@lemmy.worldEnglish
        0·
        8 months ago

        I hopped around Southeast Asia until I landed in Japan.

        It’s not easy here, and it’s not without its own problems, but it works much better for me.

        (I’d probably still be in Singapore were it not for the heat. The food is 10/10 and dirt cheap, but I missed seasons.)

        (I knew that answering this question would make the jerks upset somehow.)

        • Codilingus@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
          0·
          8 months ago

          Do you have to struggle with the insane only work, no life, salary man/woman problems? Or did you find something that doesn’t follow that “life style?”

          • aeronmelon@lemmy.worldEnglish
            1·
            8 months ago

            No, I see it but I don’t have to deal with it.

            It’s also not as much of a constant as it used to be.

    • Lucidlethargy@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      0·
      8 months ago

      It’s unfortunate you left… When good people leave, we’re stuck with more of the bad gaining power.

      If we lose this country to the bad people even more than it’s already been lost, then the entire world may pay dearly as a result.

      • nilloc@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
        1·
        8 months ago

        If he left a solid red or blue state, it doesn’t really matter. Our minority representation, first pst the pole voting and electoral college means that a lot of smart people from cities or solid blue areas can leave and nothing will change.

        Plus OP’s an outlier, most of us can’t afford to relocate like this.