Stalinism on the Installment Plan

One of the most frequent motifs in the literature on Stalinism is that of the dissenter who confesses to a crime he never committed. What made Stalinism so depraved, in the eyes of intellectuals, was not that it jailed or slaughtered men and women by the millions; it was that it was that it got those men and women, who were plainly innocent, to affirm their guilt to a waiting world.

Here in the US, we don’t need to force people to confess to crimes they didn’t commit (though we certainly do that, too). No, to truly validate our system, we conscript the defendant’s soul in a different way.

A state-by-state survey conducted by NPR found that defendants are charged for many government services that were once free, including those that are constitutionally required. For example:

  • In at least 43 states and the District of Columbia, defendants can be billed for a public defender.
  • In at least 41 states, inmates can be charged room and board for jail and prison stays.
  • In at least 44 states, offenders can get billed for their own probation and parole supervision.
  • And in all states except Hawaii, and the District of Columbia, there’s a fee for the electronic monitoring devices defendants and offenders are ordered to wear.

These fees — which can add up to hundreds or even thousands of dollars — get charged at every step of the system, from the courtroom, to jail, to probation. Defendants and offenders pay for their own arrest warrants, their court-ordered drug and alcohol-abuse treatment and to have their DNA samples collected. They are billed when courts need to modernize their computers. In Washington state, for example, they even get charged a fee for a jury trial — with a 12-person jury costing $250, twice the fee for a six-person jury.

It would be short-sighted to see these policies as mere cost-saving measures. Their function seems as ideological as it is financial. As one court administrator in Michigan put it:

The only reason that the court is in operation and doing business at that point in time is because that defendant has come in and is a user of those services. They don’t necessarily see themselves as a customer because, obviously, they’re not choosing to be there. But in reality they are.

That these policies overwhelmingly target the poor only adds to their allure: What better way to reform capitalism’s losers than to force them to pay to play?

In the same way that the Stalinist show trial was meant to model the virtuous comrade—so dutiful to the ideals of communism that he would sacrifice his very life in order to validate the cause—so does the American criminal justice system model the virtuous capitalist: so committed to the ideals of the free market that he’s willing to pay the price, in both senses of the word, of his crime.

16 Comments

  1. Jim Brash May 20, 2014 at 1:12 am | #

    Justice is blind! One eyes sees police blue the other sees money green.

  2. Joanna Bujes May 20, 2014 at 1:55 am | #

    But we have not yet reached the depths of Ceasescu’s regime during which families were billed for the bullets used in executing family members.

  3. Theo May 20, 2014 at 7:15 am | #

    This comes under the heading of The Big Con for me. An alternate heading could be Chutzpah Anti-Constitutionalism. Almost all the rest that prosecuting attorneys, courts, the states, and prisons, Wall Street, corporations do comes under the heading of Authoritarian Sadism, for instance, the states refusing to implement the recently passed anti-rape and sexual assault legislation for prisons, putting it off completely or almost indefinitely. As there are endless examples of stupidity, cruelty, sadism. mendacity, law breaking, aggression, bad practices, you name it, by our so-called leaders in the country’s governments and institutions now, I tend to make a mental note whenever I read a piece anywhere and put it in one of many mental categories. Authoritarian Sadism is a monumental file these days and these categories and others overlap endlessly.

  4. jonnybutter May 20, 2014 at 7:31 am | #

    How much is the the fee for carving the name of your crime onto your back?

    They don’t necessarily see themselves as a customer because, obviously, they’re not choosing to be there.

    They don’t ‘necessarily’…?! Wow, what an a-hole thing to say.

    I had a big argument with fellow students and the prof. last year when I was getting an (almost worthless) MS, about running a university ‘like a business’. I thought it was a bad idea, among many other reasons, because being treated like a ‘customer’ isn’t necessarily something you want, since customers are often seen as dupes. Didn’t know about prisoners.

    • jonnybutter May 20, 2014 at 7:58 am | #

      How much is the the fee for carving the name of your crime onto your back?

      After a moment’s reflection, it’s clear that pricing will become tiered. What used to be just the standard will become the ‘classic’ version, and then there will be a ‘premium’ package, which includes an anesthetic.

  5. zunguzungu May 20, 2014 at 7:54 am | #

    And yet: since money is speech, isn’t paying for your crime a kind of confession?

    • jonnybutter May 20, 2014 at 8:09 am | #

      Good point!

  6. jonnybutter May 20, 2014 at 8:11 am | #

    fwiw, edit mistake in line 4 of OP

  7. afeman May 20, 2014 at 8:39 am | #

    In one of the more obscure cuts of Terry Gilliam’s Brazil, a guard strapping a detainee into a torture chair advises “Confess quickly! Otherwise you might jeaprodize your credit rating!” Come to think of it, the entire movie was built around the premise outlined here. It was supposed to be absurdist satire.

  8. William Timberman May 20, 2014 at 10:23 am | #

    A note of appreciation: no one these days has done more than you have to reveal the nasty realities behind the curtain of American mythology. Documentation is hard work, and we all owe you for doing it. I’m sure I’m not the first to notice this, but I don’t want to be the last to thank you for it.

    • jonnybutter May 20, 2014 at 8:53 pm | #

      Second what W Timberman said. I’d imagine it’s sort of a semi-thankless task to be both a serious academic and seriously engaged politically (vis a vis the same issues/material). So thanks!

  9. Alto Berto (@AltoBerto) May 20, 2014 at 12:44 pm | #

    “The only reason that the court is in operation and doing business at that point in time is because that defendant has come in and is a user of those services,” says Michael Day, the administrator for the Allegan County Circuit Court. “They don’t necessarily see themselves as a customer because, obviously, they’re not choosing to be there. But in reality they are.”

    A court is not a business. There are similarities but no more than one would a local church. This man needs to be fired.

    • jonnybutter May 20, 2014 at 8:58 pm | #

      This man needs to be fired.

      What’s the point of that? Firing him is worse than worthless, since, although he has his share of blame, he is just following unspoken orders; firing him might make you feel you did something substantive, when in face it would have absolutely *zero* effect on anything.

  10. Glenn May 20, 2014 at 7:11 pm | #

    I happened to catch a snip of the broadcast of this investigative report on NPR’s All Things Considered yesterday. It’s an outrage and a podcast, too.

  11. Diana May 20, 2014 at 9:58 pm | #

    Old school. The Spanish Inquisition used to bill the families of the heretics for their imprisonment at a rate which was not cheap and more heretics confessed to save their families from poverty than from torture.

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