For 14 dollars a night, you can come home to a private room in not-so-exclusive lodging on Parkers Lake in Plymouth. All you have to do is be convicted of a misdemeanor and get sentenced to work release in Hennepin County.

Alas, prices are going up everywhere. For the privilege of staying at the Adult Corrections Facility, better known as the Hennepin County workhouse, scofflaws should get ready to fork over an additional $2.

The 2009 increase in lodging costs that Hennepin County commissioners are likely to approve at their next meeting won’t cover the entire hospitality costs. An additional $45.50 will be billed to the municipality that put the inmate in jail in the first place. Most inmates don’t pay anything for their stay in the pokey, but Minnesota law allows counties to collect a per-night fee for misdemeanor convicts on work release, John O’Sullivan of Hennepin’s Department of Community Corrections and Rehabilitation told me. Does anyone actually pay it? “Oh yes,” he said. After all, these are inmates who get out of incarceration to work.

In 2007, the county collected $413,985 from work release inmates, said Greg Wagner, financial manager for the county corrections agency. The inmates pay weekly with money orders, although the county will experiment with a kiosk in which they can pay for their accommodations with a credit card, he told me.

For that $16 per night, those on work release have to come through security just like any other inmate. But they get to rest their heads in the comfort of an individual room, not a cell.

This entry was posted on Monday, September 15th, 2008 at 2:48 pm and is filed under Government spends your money. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.