Jail Fees

With new legislation placing more inmates in the county jail—and with budgets continuing to be tight—I’ve been getting a lot of questions about jail fees. I’ve written about them in the past (see this post), but so much has changed since then that it’s time for another look. General Statute 7A-313 describes two types of jail fees. The first, set out in the first paragraph of that statutory section, is a fee for time spent in jail awaiting trial. The law says that a person who winds up getting convicted shall be liable to the county in the sum of $10 for each 24 hours of confinement or fraction thereof. The pretrial confinement fee used to be $5 per day but was increased to $10, effective August 1, 2011. S.L. 2011-145, sec. 31.26.(e), as amended by S.L. 2011-192, sec. 7.(p). No fee is assessed if a person is acquitted or the case against him or her is dismissed. The second fee, set out in the second paragraph of G.S. 7A-313, is for “persons who are ordered to pay jail fees pursuant to a probationary sentence.” The exact meaning of that portion of the law has never been crystal clear, but it has generally been interpreted—especially since an amendment in 2000—to authorize a fee for every day served in jail as part of a sentence to special probation (a split sentence). The amount of the probationary-sentence jail fee is set at the “same per diem rate paid by the Department of Correction [...]