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Can someone explain why the courts do these type of minimal fines? Having a cup of coffee on the Bart could land me a $250 fine, which is 2x as much proportiona
by tibbon 11y ago
Can someone explain why the courts do these type of minimal fines? Having a cup of coffee on the Bart could land me a $250 fine, which is 2x as much proportional of my personal yearly revenue. This seems more harmful than a cup of coffee.
- kbenson 11y agoUnless you are making 12.5 million a year, I think you converted wrong. It's likely 20 or 200 times more the proportional amount of your yearly revenue.
- tibbon 11y agoAh yea, I math'd wrong ;) You made my point even stronger.
- secfirstmd 11y agoTIL that having a cup of coffee on the BART can lead to a $250 fine. Now I know why everyone was staring at me when I was on my way in from the airport...
- harryh 11y agoBecause fines are assessed based on the harm done not the ability of the person/organization to pay.
- dredmorbius 11y agoCitation requested.
- jsjohnst 11y agoSo you're saying a cup of coffee is much more harmful proportionally than invading the privacy of millions? Let's say it was only 1 million, so not even $1.50 each. Cup of coffee for same one person, nearly 200x more.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- harryh 11y agoAs I said, fines aren't assessed as a proportion of the paying party's income. That's just not something taken into account in the vast majority of instances. I'm not making a value judgement on whether that's good or not. I'm just making a factual statement about the way the US justice system works.
- jsjohnst 11y agoI didn't imply anything about the paying party's income, I stated the impact of the crime. The fine should be proportional to the number affected and to what extreme, not the income of the culprit.