Booking Fees

Within the last year or so, jail booking fees have started to be charged to each city. This means that any person in a city or any person drifting through a city who breaks a law and gets booked into jail, costs your city $158. These fees can run into the hundreds of thousands of dollars and up to a million or so for the larger municipalities.

Does the arrestee have to pay this fee since they are the ones who were arrested and generated the cost? Not on your life . . . that’s too logical. The honest, hard-working, law-abiding, tax-paying citizens pay this fee.

The city of La Habra recently adopted an ordinance to allow them to bill the arrestee to cover these jail booking fees. That sounds right to me. If you or I break the law by speeding or going through a red light or parking illegally, we have to pay a fine, don’t we? Why shouldn’t the (convicted) arrestee be required to do the same?

I understand that the judges in Orange County will not implement such a fine on any defendant, even after they have been convicted of a crime. They will not take that action nor will they enforce any ordinance adopted by the cities.

I guess the judges feel that the fee is too harsh to be charged to the criminal. It’s just easier to stick it to the public like everything else that is dumped on them to pay.

Most cities have a “user’s fee”--you use it, you pay the fee. Let’s start a “doer’s fee”--you do the crime, then you do the time and the fine (fee).

GUY CARROZZO, City Councilman, Fountain Valley