Children Detained in America's Prisons are Charged for Underwear, Food, Books, Even Family Visits

https://www.newsweek.com/i-teach-kids-prison-arizona-pay-everything-1488072?fbclid=IwAR2cBnhFMPGo-Ahd9RCzZxeQp3Dgwfd5Gx59yQX_qKj-ezFPB9yoZ5S9Tzo

Jonna Mastropasqua
On 2/19/20 at 12:42 PM EST

I teach minors who are incarcerated in the adult jail in Pima County, Arizona.

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"Do you have underwear?" I spoke low, trying not to let my voice carry to the rest of the unit; its current occupants: 37 teenage boys.

"No," she whispered, "I don't have a bra, either." The police took it when she was arrested because it had an underwire. It and her underwear went into storage with the rest of her property. This county jail does not issue bras or underwear for free, not even to minors.

Assuming someone would put money on her account, she'd be able to order both—underwear cost $3.25 a pair and a bra costs $13.50. Once the money was credited to her account, it would take three to five days to order them and another four to get them.

Luckily for her, I found a sports bra and some too-big underwear in a pile of items I had in my office, but this no solution for the minors who have to pay for items like bras, socks and even for video visits with their friends or families. A single 25 minute visit costs $7.50 or $16.50 for 55 minutes.

States like California passed a ban for-profit, private prison and detention centers to reduce the amount of money private companies make from housing prisoners. Yet, child (and adult) inmates across the country are, along with their families, bearing more and more of the costs of incarceration—even when it comes to bare necessities like toilet paper or feminine hygiene supplies.

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My students and their families pay for commissary—food and hygiene items above and beyond the extremely limited allotments the jail provides. They get hot trays for lunch, instead of the single sandwich, milk and fruit the adults usually get. But being teenagers, they are still hungry all the time.

Commissary items are paid for with money added to an inmate's account, but it typically costs $4 per transaction to do it. If a family member puts $40 on an inmate's books, the inmate gets to spend $36. Commissary also includes things like sweatshirts ($12.99) or socks ($2.75/pair) or boxers ($4.25/pair)—for the times when it is cold in the housing unit (and it often is.)

Commissary companies alone bring in an estimated annual profit of $1.6 billion per year.

The list of things that are considered optional, including clothes thick enough to stay warm, is long. The prices inflated. A litany that includes a single "soup" ($1.25 for a ramen packet I can pick up at Walmart for $0.22), phone time (a pre-paid account at about $0.20/minute, if you don't include the fees paid to load money on the account). In some places, inmates pay as much as $0.05 a minute to read eBooks that they don't own once they're done! The company that provides inmate tablets—and reaps the profits from their use—is GTL. A nationwide telecom service.

Occasionally, we'll have a student or two who has people on the outside who will put a lot of money on their books so they can buy what they need. Mostly, though, these kids get sporadic support, and it usually comes in small amounts. These kids, on the whole, don't come from affluent backgrounds and they are used to going without—it has been the story of their entire lives.

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