4 ms·

cool. so some countries already have % of income based fines.

by riggins 13y ago

HarryHirsch 13y ago
Germany does this, for example. Criminal fines are set by the judge in "daily rates", and 30 of them make up the defendant's monthly income. Over there the judge has some leeway for creative sentencing. I remember this case where one fellow ran the numbers and figured it would be cheaper for him to pay the occasional fine for parking in a no-parking zone than pay the parking meter. This didn't go down well with the judge, he argued that road signs are not made to look pretty, they serve to regulate traffic on the public roadways. That fellow had to hand in his license, he was banned from the road for five years, and a re-application after a ban involves a chat with a traffic psychologist.
- effbott 13y ago
  5 year ban for parking violations? That seems extreme.
  - pessimizer 13y ago
    For inadvertent or pragmatic violations, but to say "Go ahead and fine me, I don't care" is pretty flagrant.
    - sokoloff 13y ago
      In college (1991 +/- 2), garage parking in Harvard Square was $15 for an evening. Resident parking violations were $10. I regularly parked in resident parking areas, getting tickets perhaps half the time, rather than the certainty of a higher price in a garage. As an engineer, that seemed perfectly reasonable to me. (Resident parking violations are now much more expensive, so this loophole is largely fixed.)
      - pessimizer 13y ago
        >As an engineer, that seemed perfectly reasonable to me. But it was a bad thing to do, because you were taking parking spaces from the people they were for. Their fine structure was broken, but your moral calculus was the problem.
300bps 13y ago
Yeah that provides great incentive for governments to have their police follow around wealthy people waiting for them to accidentally go over a yellow line by 2 inches. If you get a $10 fine from one person and a $1MM fine from another person, you have every incentive to make sure the latter person is the one you catch.
- riggins 13y ago
  law enforcement incentives are a different discussion.

cool. so some countries already have % of income based fines.

by riggins 13y ago

cool. so some countries already have % of income based fines.

Germany does this, for example. Criminal fines are set by the judge in "daily rates", and 30 of them make up the defendant's monthly income. Over there the judge has some leeway for creative sentencing. I remember this case where one fellow ran the numbers and figured it would be cheaper for him to pay the occasional fine for parking in a no-parking zone than pay the parking meter. This didn't go down well with the judge, he argued that road signs are not made to look pretty, they serve to regulate traffic on the public roadways. That fellow had to hand in his license, he was banned from the road for five years, and a re-application after a ban involves a chat with a traffic psychologist.

effbott 13y ago
5 year ban for parking violations? That seems extreme.
- pessimizer 13y ago
  For inadvertent or pragmatic violations, but to say "Go ahead and fine me, I don't care" is pretty flagrant.
  - sokoloff 13y ago
    In college (1991 +/- 2), garage parking in Harvard Square was $15 for an evening. Resident parking violations were $10. I regularly parked in resident parking areas, getting tickets perhaps half the time, rather than the certainty of a higher price in a garage. As an engineer, that seemed perfectly reasonable to me. (Resident parking violations are now much more expensive, so this loophole is largely fixed.)
    - pessimizer 13y ago
      >As an engineer, that seemed perfectly reasonable to me. But it was a bad thing to do, because you were taking parking spaces from the people they were for. Their fine structure was broken, but your moral calculus was the problem.

300bps 13y ago

Yeah that provides great incentive for governments to have their police follow around wealthy people waiting for them to accidentally go over a yellow line by 2 inches. If you get a $10 fine from one person and a $1MM fine from another person, you have every incentive to make sure the latter person is the one you catch.

riggins 13y ago
law enforcement incentives are a different discussion.