Prisoners fee for property under scrutiny
Still in the grip of the Great Recession, in September 2009, the City Council passed a resolution allowing the San Antonio Police Department to increase fees or launch new ones, for everything from commercial burglar alarm permits ($100) to copies of traffic accident reports ($8) and background checks ($25) for city job applicants.
Nuisances to many, fiscally responsible government to others, they seemed minor to most people and affordable to business owners and ambitious job seekers.
But11 years later, one little-noticed fee — a $25 charge for prisoners to get their own property returned to them by SAPD after leaving jail — continues to irritate criminal justice reform groups and is getting new at
tention by a council committed to equity, especially for poor people behind bars.
Houston and Harris County have no such fee. Nor does Dallas or Austin or their counties or most government entities that run jails, though some levy dubious charges with or without private contractors for inmate phone calls or commissary items.
“You’re preying on poor people’s lives,” said Laquita Garcia, a San Antonio-based bail reform advocate with the Texas Organizing Project. “This could involve people not being able to access their IDs, Social Security cards, birth certificates, medicine, car keys. They may not be able to pay their rent. They may lose their jobs and ultimately come right back to jail. It’s debtors prison again.”
Bexar County Sheriff Javier Salazar said he would not allow that type of charge to exist for county prisoners. “I think the process of getting arrested is complicated and onerous enough,” Salazar said. “I don’t want to complicate it further.”
But complicated it is in Bexar County. The SAPD property fee flew under most people’s radar until December 2018 and the opening of the new Bexar County jail and its Justice Intake & Assessment Annex. Virtually all prisoners in the county, whether arrested by SAPD, the Sheriff ’s Office or suburban police departments, eventually go to the new county jail, which holds about 3,800 people.
‘It is mammoth’
Despite being more than twice as big as the aging jail it replaced, the new jail was not deemed large enough to accept in its property room everything that prisoners have on them when they get arrested, such as backpacks or sleeping bags.
The city’s property room has always accepted some of those larger personal possessions, officials say, but Salazar issued stricter guidelines that increased the city’s intake. Prisoners could deposit in the new county jail property room only one credit card, one form of ID, a cellphone, keys and up to $1,000 in cash.
Today, when a person is arrested by SAPD and they have more than those items on them — which is likely; watches, rings, bracelets, Social Security cards, wallets — they are informed that the nonacceptable stuff must go to the city property room and the acceptable items will go to the county jail’s property room, which Salazar estimates is about one-eighth the size of the city’s.
“It is mammoth,” he said, with mild envy. “You should see it. … But we have redundant property rooms. Therein lies much of the problem.”
In 2019, SAPD did more than 32,000 bookings into the new jail. Some people, of course, get jailed more than once in a year.
Monetizing law enforcement and incarceration is common throughout the nation. A newly energized coalition of criminal justice activists, lawyers and conservative/libertarian groups oppose the policies, labeling them as needless indignities that trap the poor into a cycle of fines, court costs and pay-as-you-go justice.
SAPD spokesman Jesse Salame said Police Chief William McManus supports the $25 fee as a simple way to defray some of the costs of staffing the property room.
In 2019, the program brought in $198,410 with the impoundment of nearly 31,000 items, Salame said. If prisoners can prove they are indigent, the $25 fee is waived, he said, though some prisoners say this policy is inconsistently applied and that many inmates don’t know to ask about it.
“We’ve added two additional staff and additional lockers to store all the items,” Salame said. “There is a cost for all of that, and it has to come from somewhere, unless we’re going to look at this as a budget item.”
That’s precisely how it should be viewed, said Lisa Foster, a Washington, D.C.-based co-director of the Fines and Fees Justice Center.
“The government should pay for government work,” said Foster, suggesting the $25 fee would be like the police charging suspects for their bullets and handcuffs. “Twenty-five dollars sounds outrageous to them and to me. I don’t know many places that do this. It sounds like a moneymaking operation.”
During the recession years of 2008 and 2009, Foster said, many cities across the country tried to make up for lost tax revenue by tacking fees onto almost every kind of service. “Some prisons were charging room and board like they were a Motel 6,” she said, adding that about 85 percent of people in the criminal justice system qualify for pro bono public defender legal services and 60 percent are in jail pretrial and legally innocent.
Upon the prisoners’ release from the Bexar County jail — whether guilty, innocent, awaiting trial or set free — they will pick up their county-held property free of charge and then, because of COVID-19 restrictions, must make an appointment to retrieve their belongings at the city property room, at 555 Academic Court, near Frio City Road and U.S. 90.
Two separate property rooms, 3.2 miles apart.
And that wait time, say several prisoners and county officials, can be one to two weeks. Some report that the property room phone goes unanswered for hours, often leaving prisoners without critical documents they may need for work, job applications, banking or finding housing.
While it may not seem like much, Christopher Pruett says $25 is about a third of all the money he currently possesses.
‘That’s my property’
Pruett, 28, who occasionally worked in catering and fast-food joints, admits he has been arrested at least five times on various drug possession charges, some felonies, and has had his parole revoked at least once.
“I think I’ve paid the $25 fee at the property room four or five times,” he said recently by phone from an apartment he shares with other men he said were equally familiar with the county jail.
“That’s my property. They shouldn’t charge me for it.”
“Back in July, I had to ask my grandparents to put $25 on my ( jail) card,” Pruett said, in a staccato burst that betrays his nemesis, methamphetamine. “I was eligible for a state bond. The city told me I would have to wait about three weeks to get my stuff back (from the property room). I had a cellphone, some expensive collectors coins (buffalo nickels, a 1912 penny), a necklace, a key chain, and 40 bucks the cops thought had blood on it, and a Texas state ID and some $2 bills I never got back.”
Pruett says he has lost job opportunities because he left an ID with the city property room and that each time he has retrieved his things something is missing. His stories can’t be verified.
Johnny Guerrero, who said he was homeless and formerly jailed for heroin possession, recalled that SAPD waived the $25 property fee for him because of his being indigent.
“I turned in a cellphone, billfold, car keys, wristwatch, belt, shoelaces, maybe $40,” Guerrero said, “but when I returned, my wallet had disappeared, my driver’s license was not there, then later my wallet was found and returned to me, but some documents were missing.” His story can’t be verified.
Councilman Roberto Treviño said he learned of the $25 fee only recently and that it reminded him of when the city would charge a permit fee for “free speech parades.”
“Why would we charge anyone $25 to simply get their belongings back?” he asked. “And you shouldn’t have to ask or prod (SAPD) to get some discount because you’re indigent. This absolutely impacts the poor and working class. This was passed over a decade ago, and this kind of policy should come up for review.”
While calling the fee “not nefarious,” Treviño said too many people in San Antonio during the pandemic “are living on a razor’s edge, and we don’t want to be part of the problem as they attempt to recover.”