Here in Hunterdon County, home county of The Badge Company of New Jersey, inmates in the County Jail will soon be paying the county $50 for booking them.
The plan is for the county to collect the fee upon the inmate's release, whether that comes because they've posted bail or completed their sentence. This according to George Wagner, county director of Public Safety, who proposed the idea. Many of New Jersey's jails collect such a fee, he told the county freeholders this week. The $50 charge, he said, "would bring us in parity with some of our sister counties."
The booking fee is just one of several measures the county freeholders adopted this week to help the county in these tight fiscal times. They also voted to increase healthcare co-pays for jail inmates to $10 per doctor visit and $10 for prescription medications, and at the same time they voted to increase their own health benefits co-pay from 1% to 2.5% of their salaries.
