Curtis Dawkins, a Michigan prisoner and publishing sensation, could be forced to repay the costs of his incarceration from the proceeds of his literary work.
Dawkins is serving a life sentence for a 2004 crime spree on Halloween night that left one man dead. His debut collection of short stories, The Graybar Hotel, was written in a Michigan penitentiary and published in July.
But now the Michigan department of treasury is seeking 90% of Dawkins’ assets, including “proceeds from publications, future payments, royalties” from the book. Michigan puts the cost of his incarceration at $72,000; Dawkins, 49, received a $150,000 advance from Scribner, an imprint of Simon & Schuster.
The state claims that Dawkins, who is representing himself at a hearing next week in Kalamazoo, has no right to pass his literary earnings to his family.
But Dawkins, who has expressed deep remorse for the murder and described writing as his “lifeboat”, claims his family is being unfairly punished. He says state law contains a provision stating that the court must take into account “any legal and moral obligation” he has to support his children.
Kenneth Bowman, the brother of Dawkins’ victim Tom Bowman, told the New York Times last year he believes that any money Dawkins receives should go to the victim’s family or a charity.
Bowman told the Detroit News he wished Michigan had the death penalty. Given the opportunity, Bowman said, he’d administer it himself.
Not long after, Michigan made its claim demanding partial “reimbursement to the state for defendant’s cost of care while incarcerated”. Many states have provisions to bar inmates from profiting from nonfiction accounts of their crimes by directing proceeds to victim families, but not to reimburse for their incarceration itself.
According to the Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University school of law, Michigan is one of more than 40 states where prisoners can be forced to pay for the cost of their incarceration.
In recent years, the Times reports, state government claims for reimbursement are increasing and can now include medical care, clothing, meals, police transport, public defense fees, drug testing and electronic monitoring.
Last year, Michigan collected $3.7m from 294 prisoners. The state counts 40,000 inmates of the 2.2 million adults in US jails. According to the Brennan center, roughly 10 million people owe $50bn in fees stemming from their arrest or imprisonment.
In a 2015 paper, Charging Inmates Perpetuates Mass Incarceration, the center concluded that while it was understandable that states would look to offset the high costs of incarceration, “it is unreasonable to require a population whose debt to society is already being paid by the sentences imposed, 80% of whom are indigent, to help foot the bill.”
Lauren-Brooke Eisen, author of the report, told the Times that to be deprived of liberty and then be required to pay for the separation from society “raises cruel and unusual punishment issues”. H Bruce Franklin, author of Prison Literature in America, says such measures could dissuade prisoner-writers from publishing at all.
Dawkins, a father of three, has said the practice of writing allows him to exist in an imaginary world. Writing about a fictional prison eases the burden of being in a real one. “It gets me away from the world I’m trying to turn into fiction, if that makes any sense,” he told the Detroit News.
But until the legal matter is resolved, Dawkins’ finances are effectively frozen. He split his initial advance with Jarrett Haley, the founder of Bull, a small literary magazine, who had helped him get a book deal.
He placed around $50,000 in a fund to help to pay for college and high school for his children. But on orders of the state, the final advance payments from his publisher have been suspended.
A press spokesman for the Michigan attorney general said the office “cannot comment on pending litigation”.
