If a company is going to be reimbursed for fees associated with filing bid protests against an agency headed up by a person with whom they’ve done business in the past, both the process by which the protests came to be sustained and any reimbursements paid to the company ought to be a matter of public record. In the case of Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos and Performant Financial Corporation, that isn’t the case.

Home to dozens of prisons, Arizona is a hotbed for private corrections, which operate local jails, state facilities, and immigrant detention centers. Public records can help gain entry to how things are going in the prison champion of the West.

The best estimate we have right now for how much debt our inmates, past and present, carry is something like $50 billion. That’s a huge number, but it’s probably not quite accurate, leaving out “pay-to-stay” policies which nickle and dime families. Help us start a massive study of how these policies affect your community.

For decades, the task of recouping the costs of mass incarceration has been left to state and local governments. They’ve been able to do it with the help of “pay-to-stay” policies that make sure inmates are hit on their way out, too. MuckRock has been surveying the states for their procedures and numbers, here’s a quick look at what’s come back.

Inmates in the criminal justice system accrue billions of dollars in estimated debt annually. We’re taking a look at the prison “pay-to-stay” policies responsible.