Aussie plutocrat praises non-existent TX policy to buy one's way out of jail

Australia's richest person, Gina Reinhart, has some strange (and false) conceptions about the Texas justice system and hopes they'll copy the Lone Star State down under, even though the Texas policy she wants to mimic doesn't actually exist. Reported the UK Guardian (Sept. 6):

She writes that the Australian government should learn from the state of Texas which, Rinehart claims, allows prisoners to buy their way out jail in order to ease government costs and prison overpopulation.

"Let them pay to get out of prison or not enter prison (a new source of revenue), and let them be part of the tax-paying workforce. Texas has shown us a far more humane, cost-improved and more successful way of dealing with non-violent prisoners," writes Rinehart.

She adds: “And before the left media shrieks that this would only benefit the richer, non-violent prisoners, for those non-violent prisoners who couldn't pay sufficiently to get out of prison there could be other means, such as should they agree to give up their votes, and or passports for x years, depending on the seriousness of the respective non-violent crime, they could then leave prison and rejoin the workforce."

Unless this is some weird, ill-informed reference to commercial bail, such comments amount to pure hogwash. Nobody in Texas pays "to get out of prison or not enter prison." Indirectly that may be case - people who can can afford to hire top legal teams tend to face lesser punishments. But the idea that Texans can simply pay money in lieu of being locked up is just made-up foolishness.