Thank you for paying your debt to society...now give me $20,000

Do the Google trick. Type the title of the article into Google and click on the link from there.

Strange, I didn't get blocked and I'm not registered. Sorry about that - here's a quote:

"The $31,690 Johnny Melton received to settle a lawsuit over his mother's death was going to help him start life anew after prison.

But before he was released, after 15 months in prison for a drug conviction, the Illinois Department of Corrections sued Melton and won nearly $20,000 to cover the cost of his incarceration. When Melton was paroled earlier this year, he was forced to go to a homeless shelter, then was taken in by a cousin. He got food stamps. When he died in June, according to his family, he was destitute.


"He didn't have a dime," said one of Melton's sisters, Denise Melton, of Chicago. "We had to scuffle up money to cremate him."


The lawsuit against Melton was one of a small but growing number of cases the prisons department brings each year against inmates to recoup the cost of their imprisonment, an effort intended to help fund operations that makes convicted felons feel a financial pinch for their crimes — in addition to the time they do.


The lawsuits, in some cases, target convicted murderers or sex offenders serving lengthy prison terms. Some inmates will never get out; others will be released when they are elderly. But many of the lawsuits target less serious offenders who have earned or come into relatively modest sums of money, whether through an inheritance, a trust fund or, as in Melton's case, the settlement of a wrongful death lawsuit.


Either way, critics say the lawsuits make it harder for paroled prisoners to get back on their feet, defeating the department's goals of rehabilitation and cutting recidivism. Because financial stability and a job are key to not returning to prison, taking away an inmate's financial safety net increases the odds they return to crime or, at least, be dependent on taxpayers, as Melton was when he went on food stamps. Lawmakers around the country, and even President Barack Obama, have focused recently on such re-entry issues."

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/c...129-story.html

It looks like they target people who have come into a little money and they take them to court and they take the money, so they don't really have a choice.

It is legal in quite a few states - the laws sometimes specify that a prisoner able to pay or repay the cost of his incarceration can be used for those funds.

It's not totally crazy - why should taxpayers foot the bill for housing and caring for a millionaire in prison for murder or an inmate who received financial awards for lawsuits filed while in prison. That was the thinking behind the laws.

Illinois is strapped for cash which is probably why Chicago is trying to get back as much money as they can. They are going too far and that law needs to be revisited.