In America, Prisoners with Money Can Pay Their Way to a Nicer Stay

For $100 a night, wealthier prisoners can serve their sentence in relative comfort in Southern California’s “pay-to-stay” jails, which offer more monied inmates nicer accommodations in exchange for cash. “The benefits are that you are isolated and you don’t have to expose yourself to the traditional county system,” Christine Parker, of Correctional Systems Inc., which runs three pay-to-stay programs, told the New York Times.