In my nearly half-century on this earth, I’ve experienced quite a bit. Having spent more than just a night or two homeless, I was taken aback some years ago by a news clip which profiled a San Francisco company that, for a not-at-all nominal fee, would allow you to experience homelessness for twenty-four to forty-eight hours. Let that sink in for a moment – people paying to be homeless.

Now, my years as an addict and general loser at the game of life have shown me much – I’ve been turned away from a homeless shelter for not having something with an address on it; I’ve been put on hold after, in a moment of legitimate crisis, I dialed up a suicide hotline. So I was comfortable in saying that I’d thought I’d seen it all. Yesterday, while reading a several-weeks old edition of a national newspaper, I found out I was wrong. The homeless-tourism gig wasn’t the last of it: it turns out you can pay to go to prison.

For a price, you can dip a toe in the vast and lonely ocean that is the penal system.