

As Court Fees Rise, The Poor Are Paying The Price - dataminer
http://www.npr.org/2014/05/19/312158516/increasing-court-fees-punish-the-poor

======
enjo
For all of the courts crying bankruptcy I have on simple fix:

Stop fucking charging so many people with crimes. The actual cause here is so
obvious. Why not just stop putting people in jail so often and for so long?
Reduce the number of felonies we arrest people for. Reduce the case-load and
the cost of running a court goes down.

Magic!

This should also tell you something:

 _Some judges and politicians — even ones with reputations for being hard on
crime — are starting to question whether the use of fines and fees has gone
too far. The new law in Colorado was passed on a near-unanimous vote of
Republicans and Democrats._

This is one of the most dysfunctional state-houses in the country. When two
sides so ideologically opposed come together on any issue everyone else in the
country should take note.

~~~
jcromartie
One of the hardest things you can possibly do in this country is enact a
change that will lead to fewer jobs.

Prosecutors, police, and various administrative staff would suddenly have
little to do and would need to be cut from payrolls.

As much as I would like it for our country to put a sense of justice ahead of
"jobs", it's not going to happen.

~~~
3pt14159
The core problem is that people think that "jobs" are good. Jobs are terrible.
Productivity, health, education, these are the things we want, if you really
just want jobs take every unemployed person and give them instructions to walk
around a football field all day for minimum wage.

~~~
jjoonathan
You need _some_ mechanism of getting money into everyone's hands, since
everyone needs to spend money on food/housing/etc. The market has demonstrated
it isn't up to the task. Either 1) we let poor people starve, 2) we give them
money, or 3) we make work for them. I like #2 (basic income). The people I
meet outside of the tech bubble tend to like #1 or #3. Which camp are you in?

~~~
3pt14159
I think that poor people starve because the powerful keep them from living
freely. Every person should have the right to set up a farm on unused land,
but this gets complex in a modern society.

Therefore I subscribe to geolibertarianism. Use land taxes to implement a
basic income.

But let's not spread lies about how we need jobs. We don't. We need houses,
and food, and comfort.

~~~
Datsundere
Nobody wants to farm in this day and age.

~~~
rch
Drop by Boulder sometime...

------
nostromo
It's a classic perverse incentive: local governments profit from crime.

I think all fees (and fines and proceeds from auctions of confiscated goods)
should bypass local governments entirely and go directly to the state general
fund to lessen the incentive to "make crime."

One example: parking tickets. Parking tickets stopped being about fairly
distributing a public good decades ago. Parking tickets are now a revenue
stream for cities -- and that's it. Local governments have long since
forgotten their original intent.

Confiscated goods are an even more outrageous problem. Even if you aren't
convicted of a crime, a police department may decide to keep your cash and
your property. Often, you have to sue to get it back.

I'm convinced that if these revenue streams bypassed local governments
completely, suddenly they would be a lot less interested in their enforcement.

------
lutorm
The Nation recently ran a story along the same lines:

[http://www.thenation.com/article/178845/town-turned-
poverty-...](http://www.thenation.com/article/178845/town-turned-poverty-
prison-sentence)

------
DerpDerpDerp
This is just disgusting, on several levels.

A 700% rise in incarceration alone should be a sign something has gone
seriously wrong with our domestic policing.

------
Shivetya
Sorry, I do not see how they can charge for public defender, let alone jail
time. I did have a relative charged for a in car breath analyzer but that I
can understand.

Its not more damning than impound fees that cities allow towing companies to
charge. There are all sorts of ways they have to separate you from your stuff,
permanently.

I am all for not permitting governments to run court systems unless they are
funded by taxes. If you cannot maintain that level of service you should be
disbanded.

------
dpeck
The fees are absolutely ridiculous.

My wife got a ticket a few weeks ago for having a brake light out.

County has a standing order that allows routine citations like that be paid
outside of court for $15 and showing a receipt for repair (or new bulbs in
this case).

That $15 turned into ~$60 after everything else that was tacked on, and of
course had to be paid in person, etc.

Thankfully not a huge deal for us, more for time than cost. But there are a
lot of people in our county that an unexpected $60 and having to miss work to
pay it would ruin their month and possibly get them fired.

------
wanderingstan
I was going to say that this is a regression to the US having debtors prisons,
but then discovered in Wikipedia that the practices of the original article
are already named as such. It also gives a list of policies for each state.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debtors'_prison#Modern_debtors....](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debtors'_prison#Modern_debtors.27_prisons_.281970.E2.80.93current.29)

------
noonespecial
They're wrong about the defendant being the customer. The courts are becoming
businesses that produce criminals and then sell them to a mix of private
contractor prisons, debt collectors, and sweetheart deal service providers
like the electronic monitors.

The defendants are the raw materials. They're being captured and sold to
modern-day plantations. This statement gets less hyperbolic every year.

------
dueprocess
I became a process server in the Waterloo Ontario region (where Blackberry is
headquartered) after hearing about the crazy rates process server companies
were charging in the area.

Those in need of this essential service are typically cash-strapped single
moms and dads. The cost of hiring a "traditional" Process Server is north of
$150 - or $50+ an hour.

My service provides court document delivery and signing of the affidavit for a
fraction of the price. It's an affordable alternative, and my clients seem
grateful for it.

If you ever need family/civil/small claims court papers served in the Waterloo
Ontario region, consider Due Process:
[http://dueprocess.ca](http://dueprocess.ca)

------
fiatjaf
This is a call for competition in court services, as would be provided by the
customary law. For more information see Hasnas[1] and Benson[2].

[1]:
[http://faculty.msb.edu/hasnasj/GTWebSite/MythWeb.htm](http://faculty.msb.edu/hasnasj/GTWebSite/MythWeb.htm)

[2]:
[http://mises.org/journals/jls/9_2/9_2_2.pdf](http://mises.org/journals/jls/9_2/9_2_2.pdf)

------
trhway
"It is good to be the king", specifically to have the monopoly on violence.

------
danielweber
Even in my hardest libertarian days, I still thought that the court system is
exactly what taxes should be paying for.

------
thinkcomp
I encourage everyone to support RECAP and Operation Asymptote.

[http://www.plainsite.org/asymptote/](http://www.plainsite.org/asymptote/)

