More states now billing inmates.

To help cover the costs of incarceration, correctional officers and politicians are more frequently billing inmates for their room and board, an idea popular with voters, reported The New York Times. Although the idea is not new, the tightening of local budgets in recent years has compelled more local officials to assess incarceration fees. In all, more than half of the states collect some sort of fees in their prisons.

More than 40 states have enacted legislation allowing their jails to charge fees, according to a survey by the Jail Information Center of the National Institute of Corrections. However, not all those states have begun collecting fees. There are no data on how much is being collected, but fees are being levied for booking and processing, co-payments on medical treatment and room and board.

The New Jersey Legislature is considering a proposal by the state's corrections commissioner, Devon Brown, to allow the state to collect up to $28,000 a year, the full cost of a year in prison. The Indianapolis City-County Council has debated a proposal to collect $30 a day from inmates to recoup the cost of housing. New York generally charges inmates in work-release programs, taking a small part of their wages. In addition, Connecticut enacted a law in 1998 to charge the cost of incarceration and has collected $1.5 million during the past four years.

Macomb County, Mich., 25 miles north of Detroit, has one of the most successful of these programs in the nation. Last year, the sheriff's department collected nearly $1.5 million in "pay to stay" fees from many of the 22,000 people who spent time in the county jail. Inmates are billed for room and board on a sliding scale of $8 to $56 a day, depending on ability to pay. "What we say is, 'Why should we as taxpayers have to pay the whole cost of incarcerating these people who break the law?'" Sheriff Mark Hackel said.