I first started at the Bemidji (Minn.) Pioneer as an intern in the summer of 1996. That would begin six years as a news reporter, sports reporter and copy editor for a small, six-day-per-week daily newspaper in northern Minnesota. I wrote a large range of stories from multiple beats, to features to sports, my favorite being the coverage of the Red Lake Reservation High School basketball team named the Warriors. Here is a collection of my stories from my time at the Pioneer.
Aug. 9, 1996
By Devlyn Brooks
Staff Writer
A life of crime is getting more expensive for Minnesota's inmates. With the passage of the 1996 Omnibus Crime Bill, Minnesota inmates will be required to contribute a minimum $3 co-payment each time the prisoner receives medical services.
State prisons and many county jails are putting final administrative touches on a medical co-payment plan allowed under the 1996 legislation.
According to Sheriff DeeWayne Rognstad, beginning Sept. 1, Beltrami County will be one of those counties instituting a co-payment. However, Beltrami County will charge $5 each time an inmate receives medical services. The co-payment also will apply to visits with the jail nurse and prescription medications.
"We're hoping this way every time they get a little hack they won't run to the hospital," Rognstad said. "Some people think that when they're in jail the county is supposed to take care of them. I think we take care of them enough."
According to a Sheriff's Department news release, the co-payments will be deducted from the inmates' commissary accounts -- private inmate accounts used to pay for personal expenses while in jail. If the inmate's account cannot cover the expense it will be considered a debt against the account until it can be paid.
"No inmate, however, will be denied necessary medical care because of indigent status," Rognstad said.
According to the Associated Press, charging inmate fees is a new trend in law enforcement. At least six states already are charging fees. The movement started in 1984 in Michigan, said Bud Meeks, executive director of the National Sheriffs' Association.
Meeks said the medical fees reduced inmate health care visits by 20 percent in Florida and California.
"Sick call got to be a social event," he said.
Rognstad said he will not know how much the $5 co-payment will generate until next year, but Dakota County Sheriff Don Gudmunson said if only 80 percent of his 1995 inmates had paid a co-payment, it would have raised $56,000.
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