Monday, February 20, 2017

tickets, and their effect

Michigan has a programs that impose fees above and beyond the initial fines for repeat offenders. Drivers who amass seven points in two years are assessed a $100 fee each year and an extra $50 for any points accumulated above that.

The higher the fees, the more people simply don’t pay.

 Michigan reports a collection rate of only around 50 %.

 California figures it faces $10 billion in uncollected fines.

In California the increasingly limited access to the overcrowded courts to get problems sorted out have produced more than 4 million license suspensions in the past eight years.

Traffic-ticket abuse, high surcharges, and a confounding wall of bureaucracy were cited in an investigation by the Justice Department of police practices in riot-torn Ferguson, Missouri.

There, in 2013 alone, a city of 21,000 issued 33,000 arrest warrants for unpaid traffic tickets and other minor offenses

Ferguson has that revenue earmarked for 21 percent of the city’s operating budget. Civil libertarians suing the city say Ferguson has effectively created a debtors’ prison system that jails those unable to pay the jacked-up fines while rewarding private debt-collection companies with copious profit.

http://www.caranddriver.com/columns/traffic-tickets-have-become-a-tax-hack-pile-on-column

1 comment:

  1. sad but true.
    a generation ago, cops were actual police officers, serve and protect etc.
    now they are just money grubbing revenue collection officers whose main job is to rake in the cash.

    proof is right here, in a podunk town not far from me
    http://www.myajc.com/news/local/dirty-license-plate-leads-590-traffic-fine/ofznb3FwsbLuDqQOpJPe9N/

    every time you get a traffic ticket, you should hire a local lawyer and fight it.
    I have and I do, and it works nearly every time to keep it off your driving record.
    if the greedy police end up with the money, at least clog up their court system, dont just mail in the money.

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