How Cities Make Money by Fining the Poor

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/08/magazine/cities-fine-poor-jail.html

by paulpauper • 8 years ago

61 15 8 years ago

The "The extra $155 was a processing fee" on the $100 fine is very uniquely American. I've lived in a few countries, and I've never seen or experienced that in any of them.

The whole concept of court fees kind of undermines justice. For example in some situation pleading guilty to a traffic citation is cheaper than being found innocent simply because the court fees are still required regardless of guilt (and may exceed the fine itself).

I really don't understand it. The US is full of these little fees and costs tacked onto everything. Even applying to go to college has a fee and getting a free public education might cost hundreds of dollars in fees.

kinos• 8 years ago

Tell me about it. I'm in between cars at the moment, and getting a $500~$1000 beater is more trouble than its worth at the moment because it'd be $200 in lyft fees, $75 in paperwork fees, and all the places necessary to do the paperwork are open on different days.

I'm spending $300 a month on lyft because of it.

randyrand• 8 years ago

just fyi, $300 a month on Lyft is much cheaper than the average car (~$750/month) - though not an apples to apples comparison.

davengh• 8 years ago

I worked at the state courts in California for a while. The "Penalty Assessment" fee amused/enraged me; at the time IIRC it was $17.50 per $10 of statutory fine. So the effective cost of a $100 statutory fine was $100 + $175 PA + court costs ($40 or more) + special fees ($1 if the charge could be adjudicated in night court, for example). So a $100 offense started at an actual out-the-door cost of about $315.

Being a fee, "Penalty Assessment" could be changed administratively as opposed to changing the actual fine which needed legislation.

cableshaft3• 8 years ago

The first time I encountered court fees came as a shock to me.

I missed the deadline to plead guilty and had to show up for Traffic Court. Got up there, plead guilty to my $75 ticket (I think, I can't really remember, just a normal speeding ticket), and the judge said "Pay $325 at the cashier", and I gawked.

I had no idea there was such a thing as court fees, especially one that high, especially considering I spent a grand total of 20 seconds in front of the judge.

Thankfully I didn't say anything, and just quietly paid it. At the time I was living paycheck to paycheck, and that extra unexpected $250 charge was really hard to deal with.

thatoneuser• 8 years ago

I’ve been driving around less “desirable” areas in my city lately and I’ve noticed a very disturbing trend - there’s a high correlation between low economic areas and yellow lights flipping at a speed which necessitates 20mph/s deceleration. Basically, if you live in a “poor” area you’re more likely to break the law/be pulled over/incur a very sizeable fine.

It’s pretty disgusting and it’s hard to believe that traffic light engineering is so complex that this is purely incidental. It’s a trap. There’s really no other way to look at it imho. The people on the bottom who have little path out also are being systemically attacked by predatory legal implementation. And unlike pay day loan centers and pawn shops, this predatory behavior is implemented by the local government itself.

longerthoughts• 8 years ago

This is terrifying if true. Has this been documented anywhere? I'd heard reports of cities doing this to raise revenue from red light cameras generally, but nothing targeted for certain economic areas.

xkcd-sucks• 8 years ago

Poor people are less able to defend themselves (lawyers, free time for court, ...) so they're softer prey

gammateam2• 8 years ago

When people smugly mention that crime is committed by black people I think about the studies that show a fairly even distribution of the whole american society admitting to doing things that are crimes

The studies are flawed, the statistics are counting the wrong thing, the consequences are aiming to accomplish the wrong thing

I wonder if there is a way succintly articulate these observations in a way that shows they are all related

Like, its not helpful to say “well maybe if they stopped committing crimes” when part of the privilege is committing crimes

yellowbuilding• 8 years ago

I used to assume this idea was a direct result of racism, but that begs the question of what racism is. It turns out, that is one of the most complicated questions in the world.

Have a look at this (extremely recent) essay by an expert black historian for a lucid take on the baffling role that race plays in American society:

https://nonsite.org/editorial/what-materialist-black-politic...

gammateam2• 8 years ago

This is an amazing attempt to decipher the root of the “political differences that weren’t”

I think this could be iterated upon in a slightly more academic form. The way the author writes has academic wording and sources, mixed with collquialisms, slang and almost unavoidable bias as it unfortunately requires a starting point. It is deciphering this because of the reputational benefits of treating trump voters as inherently bad and then trying to decipher their motives as potentially rational agents. Its so close, but dilutes itself in a couples ways that I think can be tweaked.

Thanks for the thoughts

ggm• 8 years ago

A recent initiative in Western Australia is aimed at paying the fines of marginalized people, who have next to no income or forseeable mechanism of paying, and wind up in Jail because of fine-on-fine compounding costs. I read that the state's debt is forgiven at around $25 per day of incarceration which is frankly disgusting. Its also highly illogical given the cost of jail is well north of the fine per diem. Bad, racist policy (which is not unusual in Australia, it has some entrenched historical racist policies against aborigines, quite apart from its awful recent immigration and refugee policy)

c/f

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-01-08/actor-rubeun-yorkshir...

How Cities Make Money by Fining the Poor

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