Suit filed over $4 monthly fee charged to Florida prison inmates

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. - A volunteer group that provides support to state prisoners joined two inmates Friday in filing a court challenge to a new $4 fee charged to inmates each month.

The fee is linked to processing the account each inmate has for any cash they may have. The accounts are used to process all transactions, such as buying an aspirin at the infirmary or toothpaste at the prison canteen.

"It's the equivalent of charging them rent for their cell," said the Rev. Brant Copeland, with the Kindred Spirits Charitable Trust.

Kindred Spirits works with death row inmates and their families. The organization donates about $10 a month to the prison accounts of some 60 prisoners, most but not all on death row. Some have no other source of income.

Copeland said the new $4 fee charged by the state Department of Corrections for handling the prison accounts amounts to a 40 percent tax on the group's charitable work.

"This fee poses an extreme hardship on the families of prisoners, many of whom struggle to make ends meet," Copeland said. "It is more than unjust. It is petty and mean-spirited."

State lawmakers this spring authorized the Department of Corrections to impose a fee of up to $6.

The class-action lawsuit, filed in Tallahassee, alleges the law violates a single-subject limitation.

Corrections spokesman Sterling Ivey said Friday the department was following the law, but had decided not to impose the full $6 because of the hardship to inmates.

The $4 fee will raise $3 million to $3.5 million, Ivey said.