The Standard-Times reports on Supreme Judicial Court arguments around Bristol County Sheriff Thomas Hodgson’s practice of charging inmates $5 a day for his hospitality. Lawyers for a prisoners’ rights group say Hodgson doesn’t have the authority to exact tribute, but the sheriff’s lawyers say he’s covered “by common law going back to England.” Plus, it’s only fair:

“We’re talking about people who are costing the taxpayers millions and millions of dollars every year for their incarceration,” said Hodgson, estimating that his department would have raised $3 million in fees since 2004, when the policy was stopped.

“It’s time these inmates pay to help cover these expenses,” said Hodgson, who lobbied state lawmakers last month to enact a bill to allow sheriffs to charge inmates a $2-a-day fee.

Hodgson has a history of raising revenue in creative (and not inmate-friendly) ways, as reported by Bruce Mohl in the Winter issue of CommonWealth: 

Hodgson is perhaps the most aggressive innkeeper of all. When he first became sheriff in the late 1990s, he closed a gym set aside for inmate exercise, giving the bleachers to a nearby community and the scoreboard to a boys and girls club. He then converted the gym into a makeshift jail for illegal immigrants detained by the federal government, eventually turning enough profit on that operation to build a separate facility that he essentially leases to the feds. His federal business brought in $6 million last year but he says it cost only $3 million to run, leaving an operating profit of $3 million that was used to pay for other sheriff operations.