Nixon Wants County Prisoners To Pay For Jail Time

Attorney General Jay Nixon rolled out a plan that would force more Missouri prisoners to pay for the cost of their incarceration.

The presumptive Democratic nominee for Governor announced his plan at the Missouri Association of Counties' Legislative Summit Monday.

Nixon said that if elected, he would expand the Missouri Incarceration Reimbursement Act, so that the Attorney General's office could also recover assets from prisoners in county jails. Currently, it only allows the state to get assets from prisoners in state facilities.

Under Nixon's plan, all of the MIRA funds recovered by the state from prisoners in both state and county facilities will be put into a pool and sent directly to the counties to reimburse them for the cost of holding prisoners at county jails.

“Missourians should not have to pay the room and board for prisoners with the means to pay themselves,” Attorney General Nixon said. “We’ve already saved Missouri taxpayers more than $5 million by making criminals in our state facilities cover the cost of their incarceration, but we must expand these efforts to county jails as well. Particularly during these difficult economic times, regular law-abiding folks shouldn’t have to foot the bill for prisoners who have sufficient assets," Nixon added.