Ohio “Pay To Stay” Prison Program Miserable Failure

In the counties of Butler and Hamilton, Ohio, the sheriff’s departments attempted to collect money from inmates to pay for the cost of their stay at jail. An all around failure, the program stopped a few weeks ago after it cost taxpayers $69,000 to settle a federal lawsuit. The state auditor halted the program because it wasn’t generating any income.

Despite this fact, these counties are discussing reviving the program through collecting booking fees. Financial analysts remain dubious. Even in the best case scenarios, the policy may not be lucrative at all; most prisoners that end up in jail have no money.

Lawsuits were the issue that originally stopped the program. An Ohio jail nearby began charging booking fees at a hundred dollars and an additional $67.77 daily charge for every day held. But federal lawsuits against Hamilton and Butler counties sparked an end to “pay to stay” programs. The main issue at hand was determining who had to pay the fee.

Ohio law permits a county to charge prisoners for room and board, medical and dental treatment, property damage and a onetime booking fee. Inmates should be billed at the end of their stay, but the key provision of the law is that only convicted inmates could be charged. The District Judge stated that it was unconstitutional to take these fines from inmates who weren’t convicted yet.

Hamilton County was taken to court in 2000 and was ordered to return around one million dollars in prison fees and to pay $150,000 for an educational program for inmates. In 2001, Butler County was also sued. By 2003, the grand total of money that was returned to settle litigation was $63,846 to 2,431 prisoners. Additionally, the county was ordered to pay a $5,000 donation to the Legal aid Society after officials did not add the agreed upon ten percent interest on refund checks.

Although the plan to charge pay to stay fees to prisoners has failed, and has cost taxpayers more money than the program is worth, the Sheriff’s department still looks to extract more money from the jail. Charging booking fees, and taking in out of state prisoners are current considerations.

Mallory Megan works for Rapid Recovery Solution, a new york debt collection agency. Having trouble collecting money from small claims? collection agencies can help.

Collection Industry Tries A Different Approach In A Rough Economy

The Collections industry’s tactics may be taking a turn for the….better? Keeping in mind the number of recent lawsuits against debt collection agencies, ACA International, the largest trade group of professional creditors and collectors, claims more and more collection companies are working towards training collectors to take a more of an empathetic position.

Empathy might just be the gameplan that can turn the industry around. Many people in debt are being called by various collections agencies, and if they do obtain money, they aren’t going to want to give it to the aggressive threatening collector, they will give it to the person they can work with.

As agencies are perfecting training courses to include advice on how to be gentler with consumers, there will be a change of focus that includes being put on coaching, mentoring and counseling debtors, rather than aggressively threatening them. Trainees are urged to reflect on their personal experiences with collectors or someone that they know has dealt with them.

One recent trend has been to suggest that debtors speak with their parents or grandparents about taking out a loan against their life insurance policies or reverse mortgage against their house. The bill collectors who utilize this technique claim that our grandparents remember the Great Depression. They might not want this generation to experience that kind of pain and may be more prone to take a loan against the life retirement account or the life insurance policy.

Collectors who adhere to this philosophy think that it is in actuality a positive thing. They claim that it doesn’t hurt anyone. If a person borrows against life insurance it might be preferable to borrowing against a 401(k) or a retirement plan. That is because the person will be counting on that money to live on.

Wrong or right, it would do the collections industry some good to evaluate its situation, and look for new innovative ways to collect in a suffering economy.

Mallory McGuinness works for a debt collection company. She also writes articles on business, finance, the credit industry and collection agencies.