A one-night stay? Ninety dollars. Need to see a doctor? Ten bucks. Want toilet paper? Pay for it yourself.

In the ever-widening search for extra income during desperate economic times, states across the nation are embracing a new idea: making inmates pay their debt to society not only in hard time, but also in cold, hard cash. In New York, GOP Assemblyman James Tedisco introduced a bill that would charge wealthy criminals $90 a day for room and board at state prisons.

Dubbed the “Madoff Bill,” after billion-dollar Ponzi schemer Bernard Madoff, the legislation is designed to ease the $1 billion annual cost of incarcerating prisoners. “This concept says if you can afford it, or even some of it, you’re going to help the beleaguered taxpayers who play by the rules,” Tedisco said. Several other states and some cities have gone to great lengths to squeeze money from inmates.

In Arizona’s Maricopa County, which includes Phoenix, Sheriff Joe Arpaio calls himself America’s toughest sheriff and makes prisoners sleep outdoors in 100-degree-plus heat. Earlier this year, he announced that inmates would be charged $1.25 per day for meals. His decision followed months of food strikes staged by convicts who complained of being fed green bologna and moldy bread. In Iowa’s Des Moines County, where officials faced a $1.7 million budget hole this year, politicians considered charging prisoners for toilet paper – at a savings of $2,300 per year. The idea was ultimately dropped, after much derision.

A New Jersey legislator introduced a bill similar to New York’s, this one based on fees charged by the Camden County Correctional Facility, which bills prisoners $5 a day for room and board and $10 per day for infirmary stays – totaling an estimated $300,000 per year.

Finally a bill I can get behind. But what if the inmate refuses to pay for his accommodations?