Report on “Pay-to-Stay” Fees Makes Strong Case for Their Repeal
by Douglas Ankney
Campaign Zero, a “research and data-driven organization working to end police violence and carceral harm” released in June 2025 a report titled Paying for One’s Own Incarceration: National Landscape of ‘Pay-to-Stay’ Fees and called for the repeal and ban of such fees.
To gain a comprehensive understanding of “the impact and variation of these fees,” Campaign Zero staff:
Reviewed literature on monetary sanctions (i.e., fines and fees);
Analyzed and coded state statutes and corrections department policies related to pay-to-stay fees;
Surveyed state correctional administrators about their departments’ pay-to-stay practices and policies;
Filed Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests related to pay-to-stay practices and records with relevant departments; and
Conducted semi-structured interviews with formerly incarcerated adults who were charged pay-to-stay fees.
Campaign Zero concluded that pay-to-stay fees “cause lasting harm” and are problematic for several reasons, the top four of which are:
- Pay-to-stay fees impose excessive financial burdens on incarcerated individuals and their families, many of whom are already economically strained before and during incarceration;
- Pay-to-stay fees serve as significant barriers to accessing basic goods and services during incarceration, such as medical care;
- The financial burden of pay-to-stay fees hinders successful reentry; and
- Pay-to-stay fees are ineffective fiscal policies that fail to generate significant revenue or meaningfully impact states’ budgets.
Some specifics from the report revealed that persons imprisoned in state institutions in Connecticut “had to pay $249 per day for room & board. These fees are all the more concerning when considering that incarcerated individuals, if and when employed while in prison, earn wages that often amount to less than a dollar per hour.” Other fees include medical co-pays (usually between $3 to $5 per medical visit but can be as high as $13.50 per visit); booking fees; attorney fees; examination fees; and parole/probation ranging from $10 to $600.
Because Black and brown communities are over policed, the report cited a 2022 study that found that 34% of state prison populations were composed of people who identified as Black, even though only 12% of the U.S. population is Black. Similarly, Hispanic people account for only 17% of the U.S. population yet they comprise 21% of America’s prison population. Consequently, these burdensome fees disparately impact people of color.
Prisoners have little money and often forego medical care and medicines in order to use what little funds they have for phone calls with family and hygiene items. The report cites a study from the Prison Policy Initiative that explained the consequences: “First, when sick people avoid the doctor, disease is more likely to spread to others in the facility and into the community. Second, illnesses are likely to worsen as long as people avoid the doctor, which means more aggressive (and expensive) treatment when they can no longer go without it. Medical co-pays encourage a dangerous waiting game for incarcerated people, correctional agencies, and the public, with little payoff in terms of offsetting medical costs and reducing ‘unnecessary’ office visits.”
These fees accumulate while the person is incarcerated and the person is obligated to pay the total debt even after release from custody. It is clear that these fee debts hinder incarcerated persons’ successful reentry. For example, Melvin Moore was released after spending 20 years incarcerated within the Illinois Department of Corrections (IDOC), during which time he incurred a debt from various fees totaling $338,650. Long after he was released, Moore received a $14,000 inheritance from his grandmother’s estate—money that could be used to purchase food, clothing, and stable housing. Instead, the IDOC promptly filed a lawsuit and collected $9,485 of Moore’s inheritance, leaving him with just over $4,000. As a result, Moore has to continue living with his sister and seek welfare assistance.
And the harm caused by these fees is not offset by any meaningful gain to the states’ fiscal bottom line. For example, in fiscal year 2019, Connecticut collected $6 million from incarceration fees (out of the $57 million owed), but the collected fees accounted for less than 1% of Connecticut’s corrections budget totaling $632 million. In the 2021 fiscal year, Michigan collected $611,655.45 in pay-to-stay fees while the annual operating budget for the Michigan DOC is more than $2 billion.
According to the report, 48 states and the District of Columbia allow pay-to-stay fees. Some of these jurisdictions have laws requiring the collection of fees; others permit the fees with no law expressly forbidding them. Campaign Zero ended their Report with a plea: “We urge correctional systems and state & local governments across the country to explicitly ban pay-to-stay fees altogether and work towards dismantling the broader web of fines and fees in our criminal legal system that trap justice-involved individuals in cycles of incarceration and debt.”
Source: Paying for One’s Own Incarceration: National Landscape of ‘Pay-to-Stay’ Fees, Campaign Zero, June 2025.
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