9 ms·

Seriously, even if she failed to pay 10,000 traffic tickets, how does it do any good to put her behind bars at all? They really couldn't think of a better way t

• logicchop 6y ago
  I agree with you that failure to pay traffic tickets is hardly grounds for that sentence, and that it would in fact be stupid if those were the grounds. And that is exactly why it is a pretty uncharitable initial interpretation of what happened. There are always publicly cited "endorsable" reasons that must conform to the law, and then there are the underlying messy reasons that actually motivate the decision. It fits in a similar murky category as "prosecutorial discretion"
  • CyberDildonics 6y ago
    I don't understand what you are saying. Are there more details that know about this specific case that explain the sentence?
    • JoeAltmaier 6y ago
      Perhaps contempt. Perhaps a disregard for public safety. Who knows? It of course was outrageous, but there was certainly something going on that pushed the judge's buttons. Because, every traffic violator didn't get that sentence, right?
      • thex10 6y ago
        > but there was certainly something going on that pushed the judge's buttons Yeah, but who's to say whether that something was remotely reasonable versus something completely frivolous (she rolled her eyes at him, she didn't cry convincingly enough, some other bullshit). Anyway I'd argue that our justice system should have zero room for such capricious, emotional judging.
        • deleted 6y ago
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        • cmurf 6y ago
          The culture demands and thrives on capriciousness and emotional judgements.
        • logicchop 6y ago
          That's a defensible position, but you then have to accept something like mandatory sentences, which introduce their own set of issues.
          • FpUser 6y ago
            Nope. Just prohibit jailing people for being too poor to paying tickets and similar "crimes". This definitely does not require mandatory sentences which is an evil on its own.
            • logicchop 6y ago
              Your "Just prohibit.. " line sounds like a mandatory sentence to me; just in this case a mandatory sentence of "none." What would be left to the judge's discretion exactly?
              • FpUser 6y ago
                "sounds like a mandatory sentence to me" - it is not sentence. It is a correction of gross injustice (actually crime in my eyes). "What would be left to the judge's discretion exactly" - f..n work within the limits of laws and regulations. The existing framework gives judges plenty of discretion as it is. And the last thing. Sounds like you do not mind people being jailed for the sake of the judges having discretion? I guess you would not mind then going away for a couple of years for spitting on a sidewalk or something similar.
              • pjc50 6y ago
                Most jurisdictions do indeed have maximum sentence tarriffs for crimes, yes. UK example: https://www.sentencingcouncil.org.uk/offences/magistrates-court/item/drive-whilst-disqualified-revised-2017/ https://www.sentencingcouncil.org.uk/offences/magistrates-co... i.e. someone who has been banned from driving due to previous offences but who is caught driving may be sentenced to a maximum of 6 months in prison.
      • deleted 6y ago
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      • jschwartzi 6y ago
        I'm going to speculate, in the same vein as you, that she was an otherwise law-abiding citizen who was nothing but polite and kind, and that the judge saw an opportunity to make an example of her. Judges have the power to hold people in contempt and jail them, so why did he not do that if she was a bad citizen, as you assert? He chose to jail her over a year and a half for unpaid parking tickets. Why? I think he didn't like something about her, and I don't think it was her demeanor.
      • simonh 6y ago
        There’s no need to speculate, we know from the enquiry reported in the article he had no good reason to impose such a harsh penalty on this, or the other hundreds of people he did this sort of thing to in violation of judicial codes.
      • boudewijnrempt 6y ago
        "there was certainly something going on that pushed the judge's buttons" Well, duh. She is black. That pushed the judge's buttons.
  • simonh 6y ago
    Hang on, there was a judicial inquiry that found he handed down hundreds of punitive sentences to people too poor to pay fines. He was found in violation of 10 state laws. It’s all in the article. This wasn’t a single aberrant case where maybe he made a mistake, it was an long term persistent pattern of deliberate behaviour identified in a inquiry. He even said he was ‘very remorseful’.
• tenebrisalietum 6y ago
  Devil's Advocate: Look at a Youtube video of any country where they don't enforce traffic laws. It's chaotic and unsafe. Fear of consequences is the only thing that keeps people somewhat sane on the road, the alternative is chaos or literally having police every quarter mile looking for infractions. Until we have self-driving cars, it's beneficial for society and everyone who has to drive for traffic violations to be punished harshly after a certain threshold. Devil's Advocate 2: Single motherhood shouldn't entitle you to ignore traffic laws. If anything, if you get more traffic violations, you are more likely unsafe for your children (who have no one else to depend on), so maybe they should be taken away (foster care being worse is a separate issue)
  • stonogo 6y ago
    You're arguing to the wrong assertion. She was not jailed for traffic infractions. She was jailed for failing to pay fines, which incarceration is expressly against the law. C.f. https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2015/10/07/446681086/aclu-sues-benton-county-wash-for-operating-modern-day-debtors-prison https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2015/10/07/446681086... for a recent example of this being prosecuted.
    • chmod775 6y ago
      So basically you have to pay money to go prison which you don't have so you go to prison again for which you have to again pay money which you don't have so you go to prison for which you have to pay money... What.
  • bilbo0s 6y ago
    Devil's Advocate 3: Even if you want to punish someone for unpaid tix? I mean, over a year? Seems a bit excessive to me.
  • jmoss20 6y ago
    1. Citation? I seriously doubt punishments like this one have any effect on general traffic-law compliance. (IIRC, similar research has always showed weak penalties + high/consistent enforcement was the most effective.) 2. "foster care being worse" is exactly the issue, no? Even if I buy the "traffic tickets correlate with unsafe environment" assumption, you're suggesting we remove the kids for their own safety (or a guess at it, based on a noisy signal)...but then suggesting their actual safety is a separate issue?
• SkyBelow 6y ago
  Eventually jail time would be needed as an alternative if other option are purposefully ignored or other court orders not followed, but there are quite a lot of steps before you get into over a year sentence, and even then by that point it would be for contempt of court and no longer about the individual tickets.
  • elbigbad 6y ago
    No. Assuming we're talking pretty usual traffic tickets and not talking about driving in a grossly negligent way, no one should _ever_ go to jail for traffic tickets. Largely this logic should apply to any malum prohibitum crime. There are plenty of other ways to enforce these fines/tickets.
    • ksdale 6y ago
      Asking non-rhetorically and in good faith, what are the plenty of other ways to enforce fines?
      • kube-system 6y ago
        Towing, impound, booting of the vehicle? Revocation of license? Community service? Wage garnishment?
        • ksdale 6y ago
          Thank you! I'm not sure taking away the use of the vehicle is much more humane than prison for someone too poor to pay traffic tickets. Without a vehicle in the US, they likely won't be able to get to work, which all but ensures they won't be able to pay their tickets. Same with revocation of the license, what if they drive anyway? What if they don't show up to community service? What if it's because they need to work? These punishments seem to me to need to be backed up by the threat of prison, or else they're just as toothless as the fines themselves. Wage garnishment seems much better, though it requires that they have an identifiable employer and that they make enough to pay the fine and rent. Getting evicted because of wage garnishment, like the taking away of a vehicle, seems like somewhere near the same level of inhumane as prison time, for a person in that precarious of a situation. And what happens if the employer refuses to garnish the wages? Though I know that some garnishments are income dependent, and employers are usually compliant, so that's probably the best of all worlds. All of your suggestions seem more compassionate than prison, but I still think there is a major question of what happens if there is still non-compliance? Do we let violators go, or do we escalate until we are doing some violence, either through prison or confiscation of property? And if we aren't willing to do violence, should the penalty exist at all in the first place?
• throwaway0a5e 6y ago
  >how does it do any good to put her behind bars at all The good it does is deterrence to the rest of the population. Or that's how authoritarians like to see these sorts of dis-proportionate punishments.
  • bzb3 6y ago
    What exactly can we do about someone who clearly doesn't give a fuck about the law? What message does it send if you let someone pile up traffic tickets with no consequence for himself?
    • deleted 6y ago
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    • ta1234567890 6y ago
      Well in the case of traffic tickets, revoking their license or taking their car away would be much more effective solutions than jail time.
    • jogjayr 6y ago
      Garnish their wages? Seize their assets? That's what we do for other forms of debt, it's not that hard of a question, honestly.
      • tekknik 6y ago
        Or we just force judges to follow the laws? How does your solution help someone who’s not paying because they can’t afford it? Punishments are supposed to be proportional to the crime and not overly harsh. A reasonable judge knows this, a power hungry one, well....
  • SquishyPanda23 6y ago
    Nobody gives a sentence like that as a deterrent. You give a sentence like that out of cruelty toward people you don't like who you want to stick it to.
• sneak 6y ago
  Let’s not pretend: It’s because she’s black. White authorities in the American South (this was in Alabama) have been jailing, fining, beating, harassing, blackballing, and even lynching black people for hundreds of years. It continues to date.