Most jails grant work-release if you have a full-time job. Some jails are more lenient than others. Some will give you 12 hours a day to go to work. Thats 8 hour of work, and 4 hours free time a day. If you live close enough, you can go home to shower and get ready for work, and go home to supper before you go back in at the end of the day. Your 5 days will amount to spending 5 evenings of sitting behind bars watching tv and playing cards, going to sleep, and getting back out for work for 12 hours. If your work hours are scattered or your hours are demanding (such as being the owner of your own company) you may just go back to jail to sleep. Some jails may grant "personal time" for mothers who have kids at home. In this case, a female inmate may get out at 6:00 AM to 6:00 PM for work, and stay out until 10:00 PM for personal time. That is rare, though.
Some are more strict. They have your employer fill out a form stating your work hours and will let you out with just enough time to get to work and back. All jails will check on you while your at work via phone call to your boss/supervisor/crew leader. This may just happen once or twice. May not happen at all. Some jails are so strict that if you are seen anywhere other than at work, like at a gas station on your way to work, your work release may be cut off, and you may even face charges. And it happens.
Nowadays, many jails will charge you daily to sit. Prices seem to be around $25 a day. So for 5 days, you will owe the county jail $125.00. And for every day you want to get out for work release, you will have to pay prior to getting out for that day. Sometimes you will have to pay weekly. If that were the case, you would have to fork out $125 before you can get out for work release for sitting for 5 days, and getting out for work all five days.
YOu can sit without paying any of it, and they won't let you out for work. But at the end of your sit, you'll still owe the county $125. Don't panic, they won't throw you back in. Unless you want them to. You can sit it out for something like $10 or $15 dollars a day. If you went this route, you would sit an extra 8 to 12 days just to pay off what you owe.
If you don't want to do that, and you don't want to pay it off at all you won't get into any legal trouble. But it will affect your credit. It will be like not paying a bill or something like that. It will end up on your credit report. If you are really adamant about keeping your credit report clean, you will pay this off. If you can't pay it off right away, the county will accept payments. Hell, most places will accept a measly $5 a month if thats all you can pay.
Some jails will let you bring in cards, magazines, board games, books. Many jails will give you a rec period, which amounts to spending some time outside everyday, playing basketball or something. If its winter or raining, some jails will have a rec room with exercise equipment and treadmills.
In certain evenings of the week, some jails will let you out for AA meetings. Some of these will be held right in the facility, while some jails will let out prisoners if they have someone to pick them up. Many people will go even if they don't have alcohol problems, just to kill time and get out of the cell.
Some jails don't have cells. Some jails have facilities that are more like dormatories for those already convicted, and are just doing their time and have work release. Those waiting for court, or waiting for extradition or to be sent to the pen won't see this part of the jail. These dormatories can be extremely comfortable, complete with vending machines, soda machines, TVs, lounge chairs, carpeting, no bars on the windows, extremely clean conditions (kept up by the prisoners, who are assigned daily tasks like vacuuming or dusting), washing machines and dryers (for prisoners to wash the clothes they bring in to wear to work), phones that can be used with a phone card, and comfortable cots complete with private reading lights. They may get the prisoner's food catered in. The food may be of such quality that the staff may eat it for their lunch breaks, as well.
But on the other hand, some jails can be some real nasty shitholes.
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