Story by Brianna Atkinson
Video story by Leslie Guzman
Photos by Ronan Brown
Graphic by Jonathan Avila Flores
Cierra Cobb sits at her kitchen table waiting for a phone call.
At 7:42 a.m., her phone rings. It’s a 10-digit number from Warren Correctional Institute.
Her husband, Jeffrey Cobb, is calling to start their morning routine. The two collaborate on a podcast for Emancipate NC, where Cierra also works as a family advocate.
She presses five to accept the collect call. Fifteen minutes later it disconnects.
He calls again at 9:15, then at 9:33, and so on until 10:40. By lunch time, he’s made seven of these calls. And spent about $15.
The calls cost about $1.25 to $1.60 each. Not including a fee to put money on the account, which can range from $3 to about $6. Within a month, Cierra spends $300, sometimes more.
These calls are the only way Cierra can hear his voice, because the facility no longer allows in-person visits due to staffing shortages.
“It’s like they’re forcing us to spend all this extra money during inflation where families are struggling,” Cierra said. “It’s a struggle to try to feed your loved one, to stay in contact with them. Now you can’t see them.”
Phone calls aren’t the only expenses those who are incarcerated or their family members face. Hygiene products, shoes and food beyond prison meals are also extra expenses.
A national article about the country’s pay-to-stay prisons – people incarcerated have to pay to live in prison – used North Carolina’s correctional system as an example. Some states charge upwards of $200 a day.
“Nothing is free inside of a prison,” said Kristie Puckett-Williams, a deputy director with the American Civil Liberties Union of North Carolina. “You pay for doctor’s visits, medication, any of the comforts of home. Say you want a deodorant because what they issue you actually doesn’t keep you fresh; that item can be much more expensive in the commissary than it is at your local grocery store or pharmacy.”
A payment to stay
When it comes to the type of work that someone does while they are incarcerated, some literally do pay-to-stay in North Carolina’s prisons.
People like Alberta White.
White was incarcerated for nearly a decade, she worked many jobs. One of them was at Burger King while she was on work release.
She worked minimum wage for 30 hours, which added up to a couple hundred bucks per week.
Minus taxes.
Minus her bus pass payment for going to and from work.
And minus about $100 a week to stay in the correctional facility.
“If they’re interested in rehab, they should be interested in people working and saving their money,” said White, who was released from prison in 2019. “You are taxing people who are trying to better themselves and build a little nest egg when they get out, so you won’t be a recidivist.”
Kerwin Pittman is the founder of a recidivism prevention program and is the policy and program director for Emancipate NC. He said that those who are incarcerated in areas that don’t allow or have access to a bus system also have to pay an additional fee to be transported to and from work.
For some, that’s another $100 to the state, even if they are carpooling with other incarcerated individuals going to the same job.
The N.C. Department of Public Safety didn’t respond to an interview request for this article.
Pittman said the cost of transportation and the pay-to-stay fee quickly cuts down someone’s paycheck.
“The math will add up,” Pittman said. “They may get a check of $1,200, but they’re paying $800 or $900 out of this check — leaving them with $300. And this is actually their work release money that is supposed to be preparing them for financial success.”
And this is considered a “privileged” job in the prison system.
A system of free labor
In the correctional system, someone’s ability to work depends on their security clearance. Work release is the highest level. The type of work below it is typically within the prison or correctional enterprises.
Before White qualified for work release, she worked within the prison. There, she also had many jobs, including as a librarian and worker in the prison’s dental apprenticeship program.
However, instead of getting paid a minimum wage as she did while working at Burger King, she was paid an incentive wage salary. One dollar a day, totaling to five dollars a week. Just enough to buy her favorite snacks — a pack of noodles, snack cakes and sometimes a hot sandwich — but not much for anything else.
“If you owe them, they are going to take a certain amount of your money, no matter what you’re getting paid – it’s like an endless cycle,” White said. “They can write you up (for a rules violation), and that’s a $10 fee. Until you pay for that write up, they start taking it out of the little money that you did make.”
Getting one of these write ups would take two weeks of White’s pay. And for others, it could take longer. Months even.
Janitors, people who pick up dead animals from the highway and other manual labor jobs within the system make less than half of what White did.
Pittman said a lot of people who work while incarcerated only make about $2 a week — or 40 cents a day.
“That’s not even enough for someone to survive,” Pittman said. “The same hygiene prices are the same in there as out here. The same food prices are the same in there as out here – you barely have enough to buy one pack of oodles and noodles… that will not prepare them to be successful financially when they come out.”
Puckett-Williams said this is allowed to exist under a loophole in the 13th Amendment. The Amendment, which was passed 157 years ago, abolished slavery except as a punishment for a crime.
“Free labor, aka chattel slavery, still exists in this country through the use of prison labor,” Puckett-Williams said. “Even though they pay folks, the most you can make per week is $5 or $10. So, you have people who literally work 40 hours a week but only make enough money to make a 10-minute phone call.”
A receipt of debt
The amount of money someone makes while they are in prison depends on another pay-to-stay-esque factor — how much money they owe back to the court.
Specifically, the fines and fees they owe.
- $147.50 for general court costs.
- $7.50 for law enforcement officer insurance.
- $5 service fee per arrest, citation, subpoena or “service of the criminal process.”
Aviance Brown, a staff attorney with Forward Justice, said there are more than 50 fines and fees someone can be charged with. The list includes public defender fees, a DNA fee and a data connectivity fee, causing those who are incarcerated to rack up hundreds or thousands of dollars in debt just for going to court.
“It’s a fee, everything has a fee,” White said. “They set the standard and that’s what they stick to. It’s like one of the phrases they use: ‘pay your debt to society.’ And then people pick up these phrases and they keep them going.”
White’s “debt to society” was $1,500, most of it because of her public defender fee.
However, she was able to pay this debt off while she was incarcerated due to her earnings in the work release program — something many others aren’t fortunate enough to do.
But even then, White still owed money to the court system when she was released, because of North Carolina’s probation policy. Every month, people on parole are expected to pay a probation fee, which in most cases is $40.
In 2015, North Carolina collected more than $14.2 million worth of probation fees.
According to the law, people can’t be punished for not paying the probation fee if they aren’t able to afford it.
However, once again, this technicality isn’t a reality.
Brown said if the fee isn’t paid, it can affect someone’s probation period.
“(Most times) it will trigger an extension,” Brown said. “And so, you’re again in a cycling spiral of if I can’t pay, my probation is going to be extended and then I’m going to be required to pay more. It makes no sense.”
This also puts them at risk of another cycle — recidivism. Both because an extended probation period leaves people exposed to being reincarcerated for minor parole violations and due to the pressure to pay back fines and fees.
A drained community
This year, the North Carolina Supreme Court made a ruling to address the financial burden of the court system – including fines, fees, restitution and other court-related costs that those who are incarcerated are expected to pay.
The ruling states that when someone fills out an “ability to pay form,” judges are required to consider their ability to pay the fines and fees before they are assigned.
Brown said that while this is a step in the right direction, there is still so much work to be done. One of the areas being how the institution has disproportionately impacted people of color.
“If you are only looking for crime in black neighborhoods, where are you going to find it? You are going to find the crime in the black neighborhoods,” Brown said. “There are discrepancies throughout the entire process. People can do the same exact crime, have the same exact prior record level and there will still be discrepancies.”
Over time, this has gone beyond just hurting individuals, but has also hurt entire communities and families, she said.
And within the community, one of the groups that had faced the brunt of the mass incarceration system is Black women, Brown said. From having to take care of families as single parents to trying to find a way to provide for their loved one who is incarcerated.
“You have this massive system that is working to keep you oppressed, working to keep you incarcerated,” Brown said. “It’s a mass suffering of the community. We have the mothers and the children who have not only lost someone physically and emotionally, but the financial support that they’ve provided is now gone. They are working double time to make up for the money that was taken from the loved one.”
Women like Cierra, a wife to someone who is incarcerated and a mother of three boys.
In the past three years, she’s spent about $25,000 in phone calls, items from the commissary and to put money on her husband’s canteen account. And not including the $1,000 taken from her taxes to pay Jeffrey’s restitution.
“How am I supposed to do this for another 17 years?” Cierra said. “17 more years of this, where will I be financially? And it’s not only me, a lot of other families have to suffer for their loved ones being unjustly convicted, and that’s not right.”
She’s hoping that more legislation is passed in North Carolina to lessen the pay-to-stay burdens of the system. Like getting the 13th amendment loophole on the ballot (which five other states did during the midterms), lowering the costs of food on the commissary and cutting the cost of phone calls (like new legislation in California has done).
And until that happens, she’s going to keep advocating for change.
