How else will he ever learn not to be poor?
Yes, he did have legal access to the money. They gave it to him.
That word - I do not think it means what you think. Child support != extortion.
Regards,
Shodan
Yes.
While in jail, he should be put to some kind of labor (stamping license plates, sewing mail bags, picking up litter along the roadway, etc.) at the going rate for prison labor, less room and board at semi-nominal rates, until he has amassed enough to pay his fines/restitution/attorney fees/court costs.
Regards,
Shodan
Prisoners now get between 25 cents an hour and a Federal mandated maximum of $1.25. Bearing in mind that there are not now enough jobs to go around, how much do you think they should be charged for room and board? What, if anything, is leftover to pay fines/restitution/attorney fees/court costs?
Getting back to the original point of the thread, one alternative might be the Finnish Day-Fine. The idea is that instead of paying a fixed rate for your fine, you pay an amount proportional to your income. For instance, instead of paying a $100 speeding ticket, you might have to pay 4 hours of income - if you make $10/hr, that’s $40, if you make $100k/yr, that’s $200.
The wiki notes there’s a minimum fine attached, so I don’t know what the Finns do if you’re truly indigent, but I think it would be a good leveler to our justice system. I also think it would be better to have more non-violent offenses be punished with day-fines and community service rather than prison sentences.
Regarding child support and extortion: If a caring father had to choose between borrowing $3,000 from his mom or letting his kid starve, he’d borrow the money. Therefore, if a deadbeat dad has a choice between borrowing money or not paying child support, he should borrow the money. If he has become unemployed, the correct course of action is to go to court to get your payments adjusted, not simply decide to stop paying.
I can onlyrd - I do not think it means what you think. Child support != extortion.
Regards,
Shodan
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I didnt say child support is exthortion. I said throwing a guy injail until mom or his girlfriend pay child support amounts to exthortion. But you knew that.
Enjoy my humble regards,
CarnalK
I guess it is a good thing for society that the Supreme Court unanimously rejected this view of debtors prisons.
Jesus. How is locking him up going to help him pay his child support? Note that it sounds like he is just exactly that broke. He didn’t come up with secret money. His mother–who should not have to pay his child support–came up with the money, and then his fiancee contributed her tax refund.
This makes zero sense. Once your in jail you are not making money. If you did have a job, and I will assume some kind of marginal job, you’re gonna lose it while you’re in jail. Meanwhile the guy who actually has money can work the system and get out of it.
If you can get money from your mother or your girlfriend, then you are not broke enough to be excused from paying your child support. If it takes a few days in stir to loosen the purse strings of Mrs. Deadbeat or Miss Dumbass, so be it.
Regards,
Shodan
Here’s a cite of sorts. The first two paragraphs should tell e tale (it’s a long article).
No, as I said, there is a commonly shared definition of extortion, and that ain’t it.
Regards,
Shodan
You an adopt the Finnish model for fines : proportional to income. Poors don’t pay much, rich people might pay millions for endangering your children. Equally good a deterrent for both.
Well…If his mom the first time and his fiance the second time over had to pay for him, it means he indeed didn’t have the money.
So the point in this case seems to be to force other people to pay his fines, family support or whatever else he couldn’t pay. I’m not sure it can be claimed as a just system. They could as well flog broke debtors on the public square until soft-hearted passer-by have donated enough to cover the debts, it would be the same concept.
The extortion is holding someone hostage until someone else, who had zero obligation to give you anything, eventually fess up.
That’s definitely extortion. His fiance or mother were under no obligation to pay for the living expenses of his kids. The mother only paid in order to have her son out of jail. Basically it makes her (and the fiance) financially responsible for the kids.
It’s completely nonsentical to keep in jail someone who materially can’t pay what it owes. Unless, again you use the jailing as a mean of extortion, targeting other people who have nothing to do with the debt.
And it wasn’t a few days, it was months. Which probably means that the mother/fiance didn’t have much money, either, and had to scrape it somehow. Again for something they had no responsibility about. And if you say “then, they could let him rot in jail”, then it means that the money wouldn’t be ever paid and future payments won’t take place, either. Which is a nonsentical move. Showing again that the point is to extort money from third parties, since keeping him in jail otherwise serves no purpose, at the contrary.
This would amount to legalizing slavery for debts, since, given what people are paid in prison (especially if you charge them with room and board), a lot of them won’t ever be able to repay them.
I wonder by the way why the state would forbid paying prisoners a normal wage if someone is willing to pay it. What possible benefit could there be in making sure prisonners can’t earn money?
Do you get a little giggle by being deliberately obtuse and acting superior at the same time? I hope so because i doubt it’s working on anyone else.
You want to learn a little more about extortion in Missouri, Shodan?
The OP, and Shodan and anyone else who thinks things are OK like they are now, needs to read this lengthy article from start to finish. Then come back and talk in this thread.
How municipalities in St. Louis County, Mo., profit from poverty. Radley Balko, Washington Post, Sept. 3, 2014
In that part of the universe, TPTB pile on the “crimes of poverty”, layer upon layer.
Read this in order to understand the underlying problem there. This is why the poor (mostly black, of course) in Missouri are rioting. The region is a tinderbox of abuse and exploitation, just waiting for a spark to set it off. The death of Mr. Brown last summer was quite a spark, it was, but the tinder has been there, just waiting to explode.
Well that’s an interesting idea. Can we take poor people and have them work off the cost of their children? What about people who put their children up for adoption?
Shodan, et al., need to read the third paragraph of that article too – it shows how fines and fees can snowball. This is nothing more nor less than a loansharking racket.