MID-MICHIGAN — In jails across mid-Michigan, inmates are charged for each day of their stay after they are sentenced. Those fees can soar as high as $35 a day or as low as $8.
Despite the disparities, sheriff's departments in the area said these fees exist to offset the cost of housing inmates.
But some criminal justice advocates would disagree, alleging that the additional fees are not fair.
These fees come from a 1984 state law that allows county jails to charge inmates up to $60 for each day of their stay.
In mid-Michigan, Clinton County charges the most at $35 per day, followed by Eaton and Jackson counties that charge $32 per day and Ingham County that charges $8.
However, Ingham and Eaton counties only charge inmates for their jail stay after they are sentenced or convicted and do not charge for time spent in jail awaiting trial.
John Cooper, the executive director of the nonprofit Safe & Just Michigan said the daily fees can add up over the course of an inmate’s sentence and become a huge financial burden.
“The economic consequences that you see a lot of the time are really doing things to families and communities that I think society shouldn't want to happen but isn't really paying attention to,” Cooper said. “So, user fees are a great example of this... because most people who end up in local jails are poor.”
Local sheriffs departments said they simply want to offset the cost borne by the taxpayers.
Jeffrey Cook, Eaton County undersheriff, said this is about fiscal responsibility.
“Legislatures in the counties in Michigan believe that some of the accountability for the housing costs should be borne by those who are sentenced to the jail,” Cook said. “They should not rest entirely with the taxpayers. And it's fiscally responsible to seek this reimbursement and that's why we do it."
Jackson County Jail Administrator Capt. Anthony Stewart agrees and said he believes this is the most fair way to split the cost.
“Look at the Jackson population. We have a high degree of poverty in our county,” Stewart said. “There's a lot of law-abiding citizens that are also economically disadvantaged and to pay their taxes. So this is a way out. My message would be this a way for everybody to actually pay their fair share.”
But advocates like Kay Perry, the executive director of the Michigan chapter of Citizens United for the Rehabilitation of Errants, said this is the wrong way to think about the issue.
“If we, as a society, cannot afford to run our jails the way we're running them, then change the way we run them,” Perry said. “Don't pass it off on somebody else. It's our decision to incarcerate people, so we need to pay for it.”
East Lansing defense attorney Mike Nichols has several clients who’ve spent time in jail and believes incarceration is overused and harmful.
“We’ve just used jail too much over the last several decades as a way to try to reform individual people who get involved with committing crimes,” Nichols said. “To me the exact opposite of rehabilitating someone is putting them in a county jail.”
Nichols described the law as “draconian” and said this issue disproportionately affects individuals who are already straddled with economic hardship.
“The people who get hit hardest with it are the poor folks,” Nichols said. “It is really just punching them in the left cheek after slapping them on the right with incarceration. Granted, do the crime, you do the time, but, you know, let's make it so that people aren't completely shackled, figuratively when they're unshackled literally.”
To address the issue of inmates being unable to afford the fees, several counties allow inmates to work off their bill.
“Sometimes we waive those fees if the inmates want to become an inmate worker,” Capt. Robert Earle, Ingham County Jail administrator, said. “If they want to push a mop around the jail or, you know, help prepare the food... We even send inmates throughout the county, sometimes we send them over to animal control or the fairgrounds to work off their debt to society, those $8 are actually waived.”
And Cook said in Eaton County, in addition to working off their debt, the jail tries to work with economically disadvantaged inmates by helping them with substance abuse problems, education and employment, so they’ll be more equipped to pay off debts upon release.
"Everything that we have done is based on reasonableness,” Cook said. “When peoples’ circumstances show that inability, and they talk with us, and they try to work with us on that, efforts are made to resolve that as best we can.”
But Nichols said that in his experience with his clients, jail programs like this are not always helpful.
“Imagine already the stress of having the criminal record—having the short term economic negative impact on your inability to work, feed your family, look for jobs, further your vocational or formal educational credentials. That is really, really tough for somebody walking away from that,” Nichols said. “I've never had a former client come to me and say, hey, the best thing for my economic advancement was spending nine months in Ingham County Jail. It's just never happened.”
Cooper said advocates like those in his organization would like to see these fees eliminated altogether.
“I don't think most people understand that these kinds of practices, which are largely just to fund the local government, can really have a negative impact on not just the finances of a given county or city, but safety within that city. I mean, it's a destabilizing thing for families,” Cooper said.
And, in practice, many counties have trouble collecting these fees.
In 2021, Clinton County only collected 2.4 percent of the total amount it charged. Eaton County only collected 5.5 percent, Jackson County collected about 20 percent and Ingham County collected 5.5 percent.
This is part of the reason why, in 2019, Ingham County reduced its daily housing fee from $50 per day to only $8 per day.
"There was millions upon millions of dollars that was owed to the county by those that are convicted in the county jail,” Earle said. “That money just wasn't coming in. It was unattainable for anybody to come in and pay a $30,000 bill for spending, you know, a long time in the county jail, and if repeat offenders, that bill just kept growing. "
Currently, no counties interviewed by FOX 47 News have plans to eliminate the fees altogether.
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