Approximately fifteen California jails have implemented pay-to-stay programs. These programs allow some offenders to pay a daily fee in order to serve their sentences in a city-run or privately-managed correctional facility rather than in a county jail. In some programs, benefits include assignment to a private cell with a regular door, separation from violent offenders, access to the jail’s movie collection, and the ability to carry an iPod or cell phone. The symposium considers the implications of these pay-to-stay programs.

The website of the Santa Ana, California-version of Pay-to-Stay uses hotelier-type verbiage in describing features of its alternative jail program. . . . Surely this manifestation of pay-to-stay is embarrassing. But, as so honestly represented, pay-to-stay could prove salutary for the criminal justice system if recognized as part of our somewhat ritualized cycle of constructive self-embarrassment over the role of wealth in criminal justice. More specifically, pay-to-stay could become one of those occasional eruptions of transparency about the forms of currency exchanged in the market for punishment.

[W]hen people are arrested in southern California, they face a two-tiered jail system in which the overwhelming majority of detainees and offenders are crammed together in crowded, dirty, violent, unsafe conditions that Judge Pregerson recently observed violate “basic human values.” Governments offer certain inmates an escape hatch: in exchange for payment, their jailers will keep them safe. The perceived legitimacy of this arrangement, I will explain, depends in part on the implicit acceptance of two racial stereotypes: that most criminals are violent black men, and that white people, including white lawbreakers, are vulnerable victims.

The dirty little secret is out: people with more money get a better deal in our criminal justice system. . . . It is an abomination to divert our attention to pay-to-stay programs instead of finding the resources to improve our general jail facilities to make them tolerable for every inmate. Don’t get us wrong—if we suffered the misfortune of being arrested, we would dearly love the opportunity to pay for a private jail facility. However, the pay-to-stay initiative is unlikely to do anything other than mask the problems in our correctional facilities. Pay-to-stay programs should only be endorsed if a serious commitment is first made to improving the overall conditions in correctional facilities.