Room, Board, and License Plates

It seems as though there are now officials in Will County, Illinois who want to make prisoners pay to spend time in prison. The county auditor thinks that taxpayers should not have to pay the bill for criminals' room and board. At first this sounds like a great idea, but the more I have thought about it, the less I like it.

First of all, it would probably hurt the prisoners' families more than the prisoners themselves since being in jail means that they cannot be out in the world working and earning money. Many prisoners thus could probably could not afford to pay out of their own pocket, and their relatives would have to pay instead, even if they had nothing to do with the crime and are living in the slums on government welfare. Aren't the people in prison already paying for their crimes by losing their freedom?

Secondly, punishing the wrong doers is one of the main reasons for having a government in the first place. If they want to cut the costs to save taxpayers money, they should start by taking cutting the prisoners' access to things like cable television. After that, they can start cutting other programs that are unrelated to law enforcement and are rather frivolous (I am sure that they can find several).

What would happen if the prisoner refused to pay the fee? Would they be expelled from the prison and sent back into the streets? It is not like putting them in prison for rebelling in that way would make much sense, as it would only end up costing more. If they really want prisoners to help cut the cost of keeping them locked up, why not put them to work to raise money or at least cut costs in another area of government? Just a thought.