Corrections Community

I work in a county jail in Kansas and have a question regarding inmate financial accounts. I would be very interested in finding out what other facilities can and can not do in this situation to point me in the right direction.

If an inmate is not yet sentenced, any medical bills accumulated (doctor's visits, prescriptions, etc.) can be added as a condition of the inmate's sentence. We have a very clear system of how to collect the information and submit the information to the County Attorney's office to see this gets done in an efficient manner. Great.

The hiccup occurs after an inmate is sentenced. These bills float inside the inmate's account perpetually. Meanwhile, the inmate is purchasing commissary etc. It wasn't as big of a deal last year because it was our first year handling this accounting system. But this year we are starting to get our recidivists and their negative balances are starting to pop up again from their previous incarceration.

The running school of thought is that we can't force the inmate to pay his/her bill. But perhaps it bothers me personally that someone owes us for medications we purchased for them and yet gets to order hundreds of dollars worth of junk food.

I will accept any commens/suggestions as to how this should be handled from the four corners of the globe if need be.

Thank you very much in advance,

S.M. Mahan

Ms./Mr. S.M. Mahan:

Take the money, any negative balances are taken if the inmate(s) returns with money on their 2nd, 3rd, 4th, time around. 

 Mike Sisneros

 

Michael A. Sisneros

Safety Specialist

Bernalillo County Metropolitan Detention Center

100 John Dantis Rd. SW

Albuquerque, NM  87151

505-839-8860

 

In our system we charge a co-pay just like you have to pay for meds and doctor/clinic vists. Any negative balance is collected when or if the inmate returns for another tour.

I work in Travis County Texas in the County Jail System.  We take a percentage of the outstanding bill based on how much money is in the Commissary account.  The % is not much, but it helps.  This is posted in the units and in the Clinic where inmates received treatment. 

We still have outstanding bills from years past, but every time an inmate comes in that debt is there.  We also take a % if the inmate comes in with funds and has an old debt.  There are some we do not charge, but they must have Medicare, etc.

 Hope this helps!

S.M.

We had the ability in our commissary system to set percentages based on what we were charging the inmate for medical was always 100%.  It sounds like you have a good system of waiting until sentencing to try to collect.  We have been collecting fee's for many things for some time and we always got reimbursed before they got commissary.  This however does not stop them from making a deal with there cellmate to have the money put on other accounts. 

Try feeding them better.

I've been an inmate.

Had I not had commissary money (due to cash on my person at time of arrest) I would have starved.

The "medical care" I received in the pre-trial concentration camp was more then a joke.

Some of the COs were human and had branches in their family trees, most weren't. Many were clearly sadistic, illiterate, subhuman, and not even qualified to be regular old pigs.

I was extremely lucky since the ADA tried to use video and audio recordings of my "holding" without bail in "the buble" in trial, got them allowed as admissible evidence, and neglected to completely review their own evidence. CO conversation in the background of an audio recording corroborated my testimony about my "confession".

I won a civil case. I was charged a "copay" for a "therapy session" in which I was drugged, raped, and tortured by swine. The "confession" extracted from me during this "therapy session" also lead to a conviction, later overturned.

I could let your "correction community" demean me a lot more, and occasionally I have, but overall, you lose. Why? Because most of the time I manage to not hate you. If I allowed myself to hate you the way you hate yourselves and other humans beings, you would win, you would demean me completely, and I would become like you.

 

QQ. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Thank you all for your suggestions. I have queried our accounting software and submitted these options to my supervisor.

cynic: I cannot speak for your incarceration experience but I can assure you that it is not shared by all institutions, and may not apply even to a majority. Many officers and facilities receive bad reputations which are completely undeserved. Corrections cannot yet be viewed as a solid seamless entity spread out across the United States. It is a single word for many different types of facilities, employees, and policies which include an innumerable sum of fragmented samples that quickly meet the definition across the world. This is much like the term "educational system" where schools, budgets, and beliefs differ often from one to the next.

As for our facility, we try to provide meals that go above and beyond dietary requirements so long as we remain within the budget provided. We even encourage staff to eat same meals that we provide to inmates. In this way, we are able to maintain a high level of integrity in meal preparation. We have very few complaints regarding the quality of our meals. At my last count, we had received five meal complaints this year and all of them were within the first few days of each inmate's incarceration. Although the corrections mantra is commonly associated with 'we feed you, not fill you'...we simply don't have a problem with meal service.

As for medical care, we understand that solving a problem is the best way to get rid of the problem. All medical care is immediately directed to, then ordered or administered by doctors or PA's and maintained by our Medical Coordinator (LPN) and trained staff if such individuals in authority deem appropriate. We have very carefully constructed policies regarding medical treatment at all levels which are maintained and observed by our officers. Delivering the medical care isn't an issue. Getting it paid for however can be sticky. It has very little with whether we'd like to pay the expenses. The fact is that our county, like many, is rarely given a sufficient budget to support all of the medical needs. Where 75% of the treatments are for pre-existing conditions, we, like many others, have been forced to turn to the inmate to help offset the difference.

Shane, I would be interested to know the decision you finally came up with for this. It is quite possibel that we use the same accounting software, as we are both in Kansas. I have seen where we can pull a certain % from in inmates account, but havent tried using this yet. At one time under the former Administration, we would always take an inmates money if they owed us money. We then questioned whether or not we could legally do this. I am unsure if the question of pre-trial or senrtenced came up or not. Now, we also have several past inmates with negative balances returning to jail occasionally. I decided to just make new accounts for these people, and then try my best to bill them once they leave as a condition of their probation. My problem is that I will never know if they pay or not. So it would be difficult for me to adjust their account balances correctly. I dont want these people getting away with owing me money, however I dont want to screw them out of more money then they owe.