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I've always thought society would be better off if fines and money confiscated by police was redistributed as tax relief rather than going to the government or
by donatj 7y ago
I've always thought society would be better off if fines and money confiscated by police was redistributed as tax relief rather than going to the government or police department doing the confiscation.
As it stands it only encourages abuse.
- SkyBelow 7y agoNo one involved in levying the fine (or deciding what is fined or how large a fine is) can benefit if you want to remove the conflict of interest. Perhaps the best thing to do is stick it all in a fund for helping victims of crimes when the criminal doesn't have enough funds to cover damages to the person (but even that isn't great).
- ryandrake 7y agoShred the money that gets collected. This helps everyone by increasing the value of the dollar by an extremely tiny amount.
- adrr 7y agoI like the idea of going towards the states general road fund. Fines are used to improve the roads.
- floatrock 7y agoBudget shortfalls from various forms of "tax relief" (exemptions, no income tax, etc.) is one of the main factors the article suggests leads municipalities to collect operating income using these alternative fees and fines. It is expensive to operate a bureaucracy or a public school district.
- aswanson 7y agoThat only incentivizes the sheriff to order his police to shake down more to passers-through to get reelected by touting how much he reduces the tax load.
- mikeash 7y agoFines must be completely decoupled from the people levying them. They should be required to, say, give these funds to a blind trust which donates them to charities which don’t operate anywhere within 500 miles of the dining jurisdiction.