*free for a certain value of “free”, also.
The Brennan Center for Justice issued a report in 2010 on the Criminal Justice Debt: A Barrier to Reentry. Fifteen states (California, Texas, Florida, New York, Georgia, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Illinois, Arizona, North Carolina, Louisiana, Virginia, Alabama and Missouri) with the highest prison populations impose “user fees” on people with criminal convictions that may result in sending the ex-prisoners back to prison for not paying these “debts” because criminal defendants are “overwhelmingly poor”:
[…]
States may charge an application fee to obtain a public defender and then later reimbursement costs for using a public defender. Public defender fees can range from mandatory recoupment fees of $50 for misdemeanors and $100 for felonies in Florida to “sometimes in the thousands of dollars.”
In Florida and Ohio, individuals are required to pay defender fees even if they are acquitted or have charges dropped. Source
