Florida’s “pay to stay” law is one most people don’t know about. It allows the state to charge inmates $50 a day for their prison sentence months, even years beyond their release date.
Last month, former Republican State Senator Jeff Brandes, who recently founded a non-partisan think tank focusing on criminal justice reform, the Florida Policy Project, told the ABC Action News I-Team, “Listen, I was on the Criminal Justice Committee for years, chaired the Criminal Justice Appropriations Committee, I did not know this was the law.”
The financial burden is one that critics say makes it much harder for former inmates to become productive citizens.