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Locked Up for Being Poor in America

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Suite Pee

Willing to learn
And not only that, but hundreds of prisons are trying out charging for visitations.

Fucking you and the people you care about from every angle.
 

Suikoguy

I whinny my fervor lowly, for his length is not as great as those of the Hylian war stallions
or medical bills

Yeah, you go the emergency room to get a life saving procedure, can't pay so you end up in jail. Some people would be for this. Some really fucked up people.
 

Piecake

Member
Lower fees so the rich can really break the rules with no consequence. It being for profit or not wouldn't change anything about this. If you can't get arrested for not paying fines than we might as well have like no rules at all. Long term payment plan whst is long term could you get a 30 year payment plan?

It's actually REALLY complicated.

The fees right now are very little consequence for rich people.

The for profit certainly changes things. It added an extra 30 dollars a week to his bill and 500 dollars to his total ticket. How is that not a big deal for an unemployed poor person? It also includes a group who does not want to see that person's fine reduced, extended or renegotiated. That way, they will lose money.

There is a difference between people who refuse to pay fines that can afford them and people who cannot afford to pay fines and get sent to prison. Judicial discretion usually can solve this without any outside pressure group breathing down their neck. No slippery slope argument by you is going to convince me that the world will end because we gave judges the power not to put people in jail when they are obviously trying to pay back the fine, but can't

Yes, 30 years. That is exactly what I meant
 

RionaaM

Unconfirmed Member
Lower fees so the rich can really break the rules with no consequence. It being for profit or not wouldn't change anything about this. If you can't get arrested for not paying fines than we might as well have like no rules at all. Long term payment plan whst is long term could you get a 30 year payment plan?

It's actually REALLY complicated.
This makes no sense. You already said it yourself, those people are rich. They don't care if the fine is $80 or $800 or $8000, they can and will pay it and then proceed to completely forget about it. The only people punished here are those who are too poor to pay the fine. It's an unfair situation.
 

hohoXD123

Member
This will probably be one of those things we'll look back on in a few decades time and question how they could have been allowed to exist.
 

The Beard

Member
Everything should be free amirite guys ? Speeding tickets shouldn't cost anything. Driving should be a right, not a privelege. Redistribute someone's wealth to pay for this 19 year olds mistakes. It's the right thing to do.
 

Oreoleo

Member
Sickening. I'm not much of an activist but whenever I'm reminded of things like this and the privatization of prisons all I can think is "down with the fucking system." Sometimes I feel like we'd be better off without any centralized government at all.
 

The Technomancer

card-carrying scientician
Everything should be free amirite guys ? Speeding tickets shouldn't cost anything. Driving should be a right, not a privelege. Redistribute someone's wealth to pay for this 19 year olds mistakes. It's the right thing to do.

Setting aside if the ticket fee was too high you don't see how the private agency in this case was explicitly exploitative? I mean, taking $30 from an $80 payment? That's insane
 

coolasj19

Why are you reading my tag instead of the title of my post?
Revenue adjusted tickets. The rich get fined more the poor get fined less and it theoretically hurts everyone just the same. Unless there's a problem with this I don't know about. Which someone in the thread will enlighten me to.

Besides that, since when can you get tossed into jail for debt? Stuff like this makes it seem like it's just easier to ignore letters and calls so your case never gets handed off to a for-profit.
 

The Beard

Member
Setting aside if the ticket fee was too high you don't see how the private agency in this case was explicitly exploitative? I mean, taking $30 from an $80 payment? That's insane

Yes that is insane, but come on, you can't drive with an expired registration and speed and the same time. Especially when you're broke.
 

norm9

Member
Yes that is insane, but come on, you can't drive with an expired registration and speed and the same time. Especially when you're broke.

Yeah, fuck this guy! Since he can't afford his fine, let's keep adding more fines. And just for laughs, let's send him to jail too. That idiot. Fuck him.

/s
 
Don't speed if you know you can't afford a speeding ticket, not a very crazy request.

So what you're saying is that because he was speeding, he deserves to be railroaded by not only an excessive punishment, but also an almost 50% fee?

Revenue adjusted tickets. The rich get fined more the poor get fined less and it theoretically hurts everyone just the same. Unless there's a problem with this I don't know about. Which someone in the thread will enlighten me to.

Besides that, since when can you get tossed into jail for debt? Stuff like this makes it seem like it's just easier to ignore letters and calls so your case never gets handed off to a for-profit.

This is always something I never get when people say it's unfair to have different fine levels based on your income. The point of fines is to punish people, and by having a flat fine for everyone, the most privileged person receives the softer punishment, and the least privileged person receives the harsher one.
 

Aselith

Member
this is why i completely ignore debt collectors

mail --> trash
calls --> blocked
personal visits --> lol

suck my broke american eyeballs, collectors


XMEhN.jpg

senpai
 
Because that's clearly the most absurd part of this story.
None of which would have happened if he used just a single ounce of common sense.

So what you're saying is that because he was speeding, he deserves to be railroaded by not only an excessive punishment, but also an almost 50% fee?
What I am saying is that he shouldn't be breaking the law if he knows he won't to able to pay a speeding ticket.
 

Coconut

Banned
The fees right now are very little consequence for rich people.

The for profit certainly changes things. It added an extra 30 dollars a week to his bill and 500 dollars to his total ticket. How is that not a big deal for an unemployed poor person? It also includes a group who does not want to see that person's fine reduced, extended or renegotiated. That way, they will lose money.

There is a difference between people who refuse to pay fines that can afford them and people who cannot afford to pay fines and get sent to prison. Judicial discretion usually can solve this without any outside pressure group breathing down their neck. No slippery slope argument by you is going to convince me that the world will end because we gave judges the power not to put people in jail when they are obviously trying to pay back the fine, but can't

Yes, 30 years. That is exactly what I meant

I was asking what would a reasonable time to pay off a ticket would be in this simple situation you present.

also if you read the article it says they kept 30 dollars for fees. his speeding ticket and license thing was still 800+ dollars. I don't know how it goes down in other states but here in California you can set up installment payments with the traffic court directly in nearly all the counties.

This dude if I'm running the rough numbers right was driving about 20+ over the speed limit with an expired license. There's a protocol that comes with a car that we all have to follow. I got nothing else to say about it outside of tough break man. Like if they can find some kind of social injustice and he was given a fine that some one else wouldn't be given he would have all my sympathy, but as it is those fines are blind and we all bow before them just the same.
 
None of which would have happened if he used just a single ounce of common sense.


What I am saying is that he shouldn't be breaking the law if he knows he won't to able to pay a speeding ticket.

Pardon me for not getting on the "ridiculous punishments are okay because a person did something punishable."
 

The Beard

Member
So its fine that its ridiculous and exploitative because its happening to one of them "bad people"

I don't know what you mean by "bad people", but I wish people would take some personal responsi-damn-bility once in a while. We need to stop treating people that double down on bad decisions like victims. I wouldn't be surprised if someone starts a fundraiser for this kid and he ends up with $20k because of this story.

Dirt poor people typically don't have cars at 19yo. Maybe he blew his load on a used car and couldn't afford to register it. Either way that's bad decision #1 driving with an expired reg= bad decision #2 speeding while broke, with an expired reg=bad decision #3.

The system needs to change though. Paying upwards of %40 to some agency is absurd. He should pay %100 of the fine though.
 
An appropriate caption for your posts in here.

He believes all the poor people just choose to be poor, based on anecdote. King Cobra, willpower can't overcome institutionalized racism, gentrification, and other factors that are inherently outside of one's control. We don't live in a meritocracy, and working hard does not guarantee an equal return in money. The opprutunity to thrive isn't available to everyone, that's the reality for a large amount of the population.
 

TAJ

Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.
Yep, that all applies everywhere.
And the USA is far from being the land of opportunity even compared to other countries.

http://postimage.org/
 

Piecake

Member
I was asking what would a reasonable time to pay off a ticket would be in this simple situation you present.

also if you read the article it says they kept 30 dollars for fees. his speeding ticket and license thing was still 800+ dollars. I don't know how it goes down in other states but here in California you can set up installment payments with the traffic court directly in nearly all the counties.

This dude if I'm running the rough numbers right was driving about 20+ over the speed limit with an expired license. There's a protocol that comes with a car that we all have to follow. I got nothing else to say about it outside of tough break man. Like if they can find some kind of social injustice and he was given a fine that some one else wouldn't be given he would have all my sympathy, but as it is those fines are blind and we all bow before them just the same.

But that was the point of the article. He couldnt pay the immediate 810 dollar fee so the court immediately subcontracted out the bill to a for-profit corporation.

Reasonable time? A year or a few sounds fine. I would also be fine reducing the fee due to economic hardship considering that he clearly tried to pay it back. Missing a payment and then getting thrown in jail is ridiculous and by no means fits the crime.

Yes, all of these fines are color-blind, even though municipalities are consciously making the decision to increase their feeds, increase what can be fined, and increase enforcement and collections of those fines. Not to mention contracting out that BS to for-profit corporations. You know who is impacted the most by that? Poor people, especially poor minorities since police target them more often than other groups.

Saying that it impacts everyone equally is either ignorance or disingenuous.
 
http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/department-justice-states-should-not-jailed-over-fine-nonpayment-n537796

The Justice Department is discouraging state court systems from jailing defendants who fail to pay fines or fees, warning against practices that it says run afoul of the Constitution and erode community trust.

A letter being sent Monday by the federal government to state court administrators makes clear that judges should consider alternatives to jail for poor defendants who don't pay their fines. It also says defendants should not be locked up without a judge first establishing that a defendant who failed to pay did so willfully.
 

Rival

Gold Member
What sense does it make to incarcerate people over traffic court fines? Like how much money does it cost to keep them in jail? The kid fucked up but that's not that serious of crime. It's not like he was drunk driving. I find it hard to believe the story as is. I've worked in the court system before and people would make payments on fines sometimes only $5 a month.
 
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