101–110 of 123 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
NYPD has a long history of implementing the "broken windows" theory: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broken_windows_theory#New_York...
why not fine the person ? Like parking tickets. Jailing someone for something as minor as this is beyond stupid.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
But it didn't cost $22,000. If he didn't go to a jail would the city save $22k? The city lost $215,000,000 in revenue due to the fare evasion.
And if they handed out $50 tickets for fare evasion, how much revenue would that generate?
Eg If you knew that there was a 99% chance that you'd be fined every time for minor traffic offenses (going 5k over the speed limit, failure to indicate, etc) then the fine could be $20 and nobody would do it. Instead the fine is much higher but only a small proportion are caught.
It also works for major offenses. Longer jail sentences don't deter crime as much as the likelihood of being caught.
"I could demonstrate to you that every single bank robbery, that in every single case practically, the cost of the police was more than the actual money that the robbers took from the bank. Does that mean, 'Oh, you see, there's really no economic interest involved, then. They're not protecting the banks. The police are just doing this because they're on a power trip, or they're macho, or they're control freaks, that'…
Ok, but when was the last time anyone ever went to jail for wage theft? Once you look at which crimes lead to arrest and the racial/economic background of those arrested, this quote quickly stops making sense. It's the broken windows theory, plain and simple.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The person who can't afford $2 is now going to pay $50? From where? How?
Have them spend a shift cleaning garbage. Done.
So I guess this is more of a belief in the value of work thing. Which is OK, but I think this would have more value if we could then offer offenders a chance to continue to clean and then earn money, but we don't have jobs to offer them after we made up this cleaning one as a punishment.
* Nobody wants to lose a shoe, plus it stimulates the local economy (at least the shoe stores.)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
So, presuming the punishment for not paying the jail bill is more jail: if you can't make at least $182,500 per year, you should just stay in jail forever?
Or pay the fare. Up to you. I don't see why I should pay somebody else's fare, or, for that matter, the cost of keeping them in jail if they insist that I pay their fare.
Also, pretty sure life in prison for stealing $2.75 is a violation of the Eighth Amendment.
This seems to be an unfair comparison to me. The penalty for not paying the fare is not meant to somehow recuperate the lost cost - instead, the penalty is there to incentivize people to pay the regular fare, rather than skipping it. The real question to ask is: if the penalty were reduced, how much more money would be lost due to the increased number of people not paying the subway fare? I don't see a good way to an…
This is the right way to frame the question. It's pretty obvious that the purpose of such disproportionate punishment is to discourage everybody from breaking the rules; you can't just look at the individual that got caught. If one is going to make an argument for any specific level of punishment for this offense, it should be based on the expected total cost/benefit across the entire population.
Of course you can. Legal systems must be proportional to everybody. The non-existence of collective punishment is one of the pillars of Democracy.
That's not saying that the fine shouldn't be larger than the offense (of course it should), but proportionality must be maintained at the personal level for everybody.
We should just make the subway free. $2.75 doesn't come close to covering the cost of the ride, so why add a regressive tax on what amounts to a basic need?
Given that 40% of the budget for the typical subway comes from fares, that sounds unviable http://web.mta.info/mta/budget/pdf/MTA-2018-AdoptedBudgetFeb...