So what’s your argument? That the people who are getting arrested for drug-related charges are unaware that the drugs they own are illegal?
You do know how to read right? The second link is prison inmate offenses not arrest data.
My argument was solely outlining the invalidity of his argument. I did not frame an argument outside of a criticism of the factuality of his claims.
Putting aside the pointless and silly argument about whether criminals choose to be arrested/incarcerated, I’m more curious about whether these fines are blatantly unconstitutional. When a person is sentenced for, say, failing to report to the court to pay off a speeding ticket, a charge is handed down, and penalties are specified. I am under the impression that these penalties don’t typically include “and thousands of dollars of additional debt to be taken after you are discharged from prison”. Do they?
Because if they don’t, I don’t see how any honest person could argue that the additional debt is part of their punishment for their crime. The punishment for their crime is specified, and anything tacked on after the fact sounds quite literally like government theft, if not cruel and unusual.
In my state, you are correct that a particular crime may state as a penalty that a person, for example, “be confined in the regional jail for a period of not more than six months or a fine of not more than $500, or both.”
However, in another section (or sections) of the code, it discusses that people convicted of crimes may (or in some cases shall) be assessed court costs, jail fees, restitution to victims, public defender fees, etc.
So, it isn’t like the judges are just making these penalties up as they go along. They are provided for by law.
I wasn’t under the impression that the judge was at fault for any of this; it seemed more like it was baked into the processing system that kicked in only after the legalin’ was over with.
But I figure it’s worth keeping in mind that these ‘hidden punishments’ are at best something that is very specifically not a punishment for their crime. We know what the punishments for their crimes are, and these aren’t them. What they are, of course, is debatable - the wide-eyed optomist in me still clamors that there’s no way in hell this shit is legal, even if it’s baked into law, because a person doesn’t just become the state’s permanent whipping boy the second they cross against the light.
The more realistic part of me, of course, sighs and concedes we’re all fucked and only have the illusion of rights and justice.
Oh, goody-it’s legal.
I guess there aren’t any problems then, right?
Would it make a difference if under every single crime these additional fees were listed again and stated that they were punishment for the above listed crime? These penalties are not “hidden” (they are published online and can be viewed as easily as the specific punishments) and they are certainly punishments for their crime because they are only assessed upon conviction.
I have already agreed in this thread that these fees can be unfair, but I’m not following how they are unconstitutional or illegal when they are permitted by law, and only assessed when one is convicted of a crime.
Actually I believe it would. If judges found themselves reading off “In punishment for his crime of stealing three televisions valued $1000 each the accused shall be confined in the regional jail for a period of not more than six months or a fine of not more than $500, or both, followed by an additional fee not less than $15000 and not more than $80000 to be incurred should they attend prison, depending on the length of their potential prison stay, with additional incarcerations and subsequent fees to be assessed upon failure to pay these additional fees in a timely manner”, then I suspect that there would be a general downward pressure on both normal convictions for persons unlikely to be able to just pay the fine (because the functional ‘minimum punishment’ is absurd) and a general societal reaction to get these absurd fees written out of law.
Admittedly that societal reaction would be almost completely isolated to the class of people with no political power or ability to influence law at all, but still.
The wide-eyed optomistic (read: stupid) part of me says that it is certainly the case that, including these fees, the punishments for many minor crimes is far outside what any reasonable person would consider, well, reasonable, which my decidedly non-lawyer idiot mind thinks is potentially similar to “cruel and unusual”.
His argument was refuting the point somebody else had made about people being arrested for something that they were unaware was illegal. He gave some specific examples but the point applies more broadly. If you want to rebut him, you should rebut his argument and not just the examples he gave.
I don’t see how people can accept the idea of somebody being locked up for ten years but be outraged at the idea of somebody having to pay ten thousand dollars.
I’ll concede I’m a little follower. I’m way happier with a judge and jury deciding that a dude deserves to be imprisoned and/or bankrupted for his actions, than for unpublicized legal fiat to come in and pick his pocket and toss him back in the slammer after all is said and done.
I’m not opposed to law. I’m not opposed to judgement and punishment (though in some cases I think even the ‘official’ punishments are too harsh). What I’m really opposed to here is shenanigans that appear to be a demonstration of the government punishing people above and beyond their actual, legally applied punishments.
These payments are all public information and they’re imposed by the same court system that’s handed out prison sentences. This isn’t some secret conspiracy.
And as far as I can tell, nobody gets put back in prison for not paying. One report I saw said the city collected less than fifteen percent of the money it billed for - the other eighty-five percent was never paid. Another department said that in a three year period it collected a total of less than eight thousand dollars from the entire program. And nobody got tossed back in the slammer.
Gotta wonder how much it costs to run the program.
I didn’t say secret, I said unpublicized. Which these fees certainly are. I do hope you weren’t trying to mischaracterize me.
And these most definitely are extra punishments imposed on those being punished for the crime of being punished. (Because, as we know, being punished is a crime.)
I will concede that if these payments are not being collected and the OP and everyone else discussing the effects of this are all entirely delusional and hallucinatory, then this is less of an issue.
I hope you are being hyperbolic as the costs and fees around here are nowhere near that amount. I am thinking off the cuff here, but suppose a person in my county is accused of a misdemeanor, is appointed counsel, takes it to a jury and is convicted.
He will have added:
- Court Costs: $160.25
- Jury Fees: $240 per day, plus mileage for each juror at 15 cents per mile (more than one day is very rare for a misdemeanor trial)
- Jail Fees of $48.50 per day for each day of incarceration
- Attorney’s Fees for the appointed counsel (approximately) $1500.
The penalty for not paying is a judgment entered against the defendant like any other civil judgment, and after a deficiency of 6 months a suspension of a driver’s license.
But here is the important part: Numbers 2 through 4 and the DL suspension are based upon an ability to pay. Almost to a fault, my clients will tell me that they are too poor to pay.
I tell them to fill out a financial affidavit and to give my office a list of their monthly income and monthly expenses so I can file a motion to hold their fees in abeyance. They leave court like the Road Runner with the swirling dust cloud behind them. They disappear like a ghost. Their burner phone has no more minutes and I cannot call them. Their parents cannot locate them. I don’t ever hear from them again, until:
A year and half later they get pulled over for driving on a suspended license and bitch me out because I “told” them they didn’t have to pay because they were too poor.
Therein lies the rub. Most of these people get into trouble because they are not proactive enough to take the steps needed not to get into such financial hot water.
I ain’t going to claim that the yahoos you have to deal with are smart.
I do find it interesting that if a person wants their day in court, they would be wise to have a couple hundred dollars on hand. (At the very minimum - especially since somebody who handed over $160.25 on the spot might have a hard time convincing people they’re hard up.) I guess justice ain’t free.
Clarification: They still have six months to pay the $160.25. They usually don’t pay that either. 
I thought that sort of thing is what garnishments were for.
In any case, I find myself somewhat troubled that ‘having your day in court’ is less a right and more of a privilege that is only available to those who can afford it. Perhaps not all that expensive a privilege, but here I thought I was trying to avoid court because it seemed inconvenient and time consuming. Now I learn that fighting a traffic ticket would probably cost me more than the traffic ticket itself.
(And of course none of this even touches on the alleged fees that are bought on people who end up in prison, which according to the OP can run well into the five figures.)
That may be something you know. But it’s certainly not something I know. Or agree with.
Well, I was just told by a straight-up lawyer that when the punishments that follow from a crime are read off my a judge, they don’t include the extra fees - either the court fees or the prison fees. Which seems like a pretty damned clear statement that they’re not part of the punishments that follow from the crime committed.
I was asked whether I thought it would help if the court actually listed the full range of potential fines they would levy up the poor sucker who had stepped before their crosshairs. I said yes - if nothing else, at least I wouldn’t have such an obvious, simple argument to show that no indeedy, these extra punishments don’t fit the crime. (They’re one size fits all!)