By now, unless you’ve been living under a rock, you know Jennifer Wilbanks, the runaway bride. Yesterday, it was announced that she would be repaying $13,000 to the city of Duluth for the cost of her search. While this amount isn’t nearly enough to cover the costs, it definitely brings up a good point.

Over the Memorial Day weekend, the Buckhead district of Atlanta has had two separate “Crane Jumpers”, the first creating a 56 hour standoff, which resulted in lots of overtime and man hours wasted waiting for this guy to come down so he could be extradited to Florida for a murder charge. The second took place just over 24 hours after the first guy came down off the crane. However, this “standoff’ didn’t last as long.

In both cases, these guys are now feeding off the taxpayers dollars. After wasting taxpayer dollars in their standoffs, these guys are getting a free ride. Now, I realize prison isn’t an ideal location for a vacation, but it’s better than sleeping on the streets: You get three hots and a cot…. and a TV, and a free exercise area, and free internet access… hell prison’s almost like a resort hotel these days.

I think to help “fund” these resort prisons, criminals should be made to reimburse the departments that are involved in their capture. These fees should be set up to where bankruptcies can’t make them go away, and that it follows you everywhere you go… garnishing your wages.

Maybe by making criminals financially liable for their actions instead of simply imprisoning them, people would think twice about before doing stupid stunts like the crane jumpers. I’m think the Wilbanks deal is a good start.

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