MPR: MCLU Sues Over Prison Fee

MCLU Sues over Prison Fee
by Patty Marsicano
January 6, 2000

The Minnesota Civil Liberties Union is challenging a surcharge on the money state prisoners receive from the outside.

SINCE SEPTEMBER 1, the Minnesota Corrections Department has taken 10 percent of the money that prisoners receive from the outside. The surcharge is supposed to help pay for the cost of inmates' confinement.

The surcharge applies to money that families send to inmates to buy things like toothbrushes and magazines. The surcharge also applies to other money like casino payments to Native American inmates. Veterans' benefits and Social Security payments are exempt.

"What's excessively punitive is what they've done to society and violating our rules and our laws and then, the society and the taxpayers having to pay almost $30,000 a year to house them."

- State Senator Dave Knutson

The Minnesota Civil Liberties Union calls the surcharge an illegal and unconstitutional tax and will ask a court to put an end to it. MCLU Executive Director Chuck Samuelson says 10 percent might not sound like much, but it's a lot to inmates and their families.

Samuelson: he majority of people in the state system are poor and their families are poor. So when you talk about 10 percent as not being very much, for these people, it is a significant amount of money.

In September and October, the surcharge brought in just over $62,000. The cost of the adult prisons for those two months was about $34 million. The surcharge is supposed to help pay for the cost of confinement, but it does not lower the amount of taxes Minnesotans pay for prisons; the money from the surcharge goes into the corrections' general fund and a corresponding amount of taxes is not taken out.

The MCLU says the corrections department has no authority to levy the surcharge. It says state law allows the department to deduct money from what inmates earn inside prison, not from money they receive from the outside. Inmate earnings are subject to various types of deductions including the cost of confinement.

The Civil Liberties Union says the surcharge violates inmates' due process rights and violates the state and federal constitutions' "takings" clause which prevents the government from taking private property without just compensation.

The state corrections department declined a recorded interview but cites a state law it says grants it the authority to levy the surcharge. The law does not specifically authorize a surcharge on outside money, but does allow deductions from inmate's earnings from inside prison and "other funds in an inmate account."

State Senator Dave Knutson of Burnsville sits on the senate's Crime Prevention Committee and strongly favors the 10 percent surcharge.

Knutson: I don't think that it is excessively punitive. What's excessively punitive is what they've done to society and violating our rules and our laws and then, the society and the taxpayers having to pay almost $30,000 a year to house them. Knutson says everyone has to pay to house himself or herself and it shouldn't be any different for inmates.

Another Crime Prevention Committee member, State Senator Warren Limmer of Maple Grove calls the surcharge "egregious." He was a corrections officer for three-and-a-half years. While he considers himself a "law and order" legislator, he also says what most people take for granted is very important inside a prison, like buying a candy bar once in a while, and that the state shouldn't tamper with that money.
Limmer: Believe me, as a former correction officer, those types of items giving an inmate an opportunity to have some little luxury item like that, settles a prison population down. It makes it a safer place to work, and it makes it a safer place for inmates to react and relate to one another.
Limmer also says an administrative body like the corrections department should not have "de facto taxing authority."

The MCLU's Chuck Samuelson says there is supposed to be a limit to the punishment society imposes on criminals.
Samuelson: We do not believe that because they're incarcerated for their crimes, they should be treated as chattel, and any assets that can be seized should be seized, unless it's properly done through judicial procedures. It's called due process.
The MCLU is asking a court to declare the surcharge illegal and unconstitutional, and to order the corrections department to reimburse the inmates who have paid it.

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