In mid-February Yuma County Sheriff Chad Day initiated a new program to help recover unpaid fees from inmates after they leave the Yuma County Jail. The program run by a company called Pay My Jailer aims to reduce the burden on taxpayers by holding those who get booked into the jail responsible for paying back those fees which would otherwise become the responsibility of the taxpayer.
Pay My Jailer assesses a fee to any accounts that are sent to them and provides the delinquent account holder with flexible payment plans and options. The Sheriff’s Office receives 100% of the account that is owed to them and never has to make any sort of payment to Pay My Jailer for their services.
Sheriff Day is proud to announce that the program has been a great success since its implementation just a few short months ago. The program has already recovered nearly $1,000 in unpaid fees, a large majority of which were from 2013 accounts that the Sheriff’s Office would have previously deemed un-recoverable.
According to Sheriff Day, the monetary impact this program has had may be larger than what can be measured simply by the amount of recoveries made by the Pay My Jailer program to date. This is largely due to the fact that there is a lapse of approximately one to two months from when the account is sent to Pay My Jailer and when the Sheriff’s Office receives payment on the account.
“The unintended impact has been that since its inception, we have seen more inmates paying off their accounts within thirty days of their release. The overall impact on the total budget may be small, but stewardship is about making appropriate choices in the small things as well as the big ones.”