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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 ju
by 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 ago5 year ban for parking violations? That seems extreme.
- pessimizer 13y agoFor inadvertent or pragmatic violations, but to say "Go ahead and fine me, I don't care" is pretty flagrant.
- sokoloff 13y agoIn 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.