Thousands of U.S. judges who broke laws, oaths remained on the bench

> Then you effectively are creating a maximum punishment that could easily be ignored by some of the population.

No, just moving what the maximum punishment is from jail time to a boot on their tire. Conversely, who says jail time is enough? Why not make the maximum even worse than jail? At some point you have to have a max, just advocating that the max is reduced.

> Take speeding tickets. What if a person just decides not to pay and keep speeding? Not that they can't, but they don't. Eventually you lose your licenses. You continue to speed, getting more tickets, and now also getting tickets for driving without a license. You continue to refuse to pay the fines and continue to drive without a license. You aren't driving any differently than when you received your first ticket, so there is no increase in negligence. What option do you think the courts should have to someone who acts like this? Currently there is jail time for contempt of court, but we are taking that away.

How about a boot on their car? Seizure of their car for failure to have a license? Mandatory community service? That would prevent them from driving without a license, but not put them in jail. Wage garnishment is another one, they can keep speeding all they want

> You can try to forcefully take the money, and if they are earning a paycheck hopefully the business agrees.

The business doesn't have a say in wage garnishment.

> But what if they don't, or what if the person does not earn income in a way that the state can easily seize it?

Boot their car. Or seize it.

> You could seize their property, take their car, etc. But at that point you are still threatening prison if they physically try to stop the police. Yes, the crime is now escalated to assaulting an officer, not just speeding, but it is all because of that speeding ticket. And if they resist with enough force, they may face lethal force in return. All for a speeding ticket.

Assault is not malum prohibitum. Assaulting someone is evil in itself and depending on the facts of the case would mean jail time whether that assault stemmed from a ticket or not. Removing the possibility of someone going to jail altogether is not what I am advocating for.

> That's how our legal system is structured. Any punishment is accompanied by a risk of a harsher punishment if it isn't followed. If you ever have a punishment that is not, then you effectively have a law that can be ignored (which we see sometimes with businesses who break laws and pay fines lower than the profit they earned from breaking the law).

Not any. Most crimes have a maximum punishment. The maximum punishment for malum prohibitum crimes should be something less than prison.

As an aside, it's okay if there are edge cases where you have some rich person with no paycheck and 100 cars and loves to flaunt their ability to speed without repercussions because they can easily afford the ticket (or refuse to pay) or use one of their other cars.

My dad has a decent government pension. He also paid 12.5% of his salary towards it for 30 years. And the pay rate was about 10-20% less than private industry. In short Government paid my dad to do a job and it came with higher deductibles, lower salary but decent benefits and a pension.

Big fucking whoop.

I mentored a convicted felon through Defy Ventures a few years ago.

He had a wonderful idea for an app. Something that stuck with me for the last few years.

Why isn’t there a yelp for the public sector including the judicial system? Every day you walk into a court room how do you know what to expect?

If you are suddenly in front of a judge that decides your life’s fate wouldn’t you want to pull up historical data that tracks and publishes the judges decisions, the feedback from others who have been in your place, and be able to contribute after your experience?

Wouldn’t the same be good for police? So citizens can pull a badge number and see what people in that community have to say about that cop?

He wanted the app to have a panic button where users could predefine their most important emergency contacts to be pushed to social media and texted with a link to livestream what is going on (e.g. local news outlets, family, friends, lawyer(s), etc...) as the app would be broadcasting audio/video of the event unfolding.

Defy Ventures is more designed for helping someone start a food truck business than building software. The idea stuck with me though and with the renewed focus on keeping power in check it should exist. If anyone wants to talk with this man who came up with the idea let me know.

The district attorney, being an elected prosecutorial position, can spend money during the election; I chose the candidate who did not have a political action committee funded by the police union.

Yes, it's stressful being a vigilant voter. But what's the alternative? Not caring?

> For the very poor, a short (few days) stint in jail would be far preferable to having your car impounded.

This is probably true, but a car impoundment isn't a first pass at punishment. It would presumably be after someone is a severe repeat offender with no remorse. It's okay to set a maximum punishment, say car impoundment, and then judge from the fact pattern that someone deserves the max punishment. I do hope that the max punishment is less preferable than other hypothetical punishments.

> The real problem is that the poor are very often unplugged from civil society as experienced by the middle classes. They don't have a stake in it. Rather than just throw up our hands, if we're serious about the plight of poverty and its ill effects, we should be more proactive. Keep the penalties, because jail time is something everybody understands, no matter how poor you are. But be proactive about not only enforcement but remediation. Send the darned judges to the people rather than making the people come to the judge. If all the person can afford is a quarter, then take the quarter and thank them for their time and their participation.

This is a fine take, but is nearly impossible to do wholesale because there are so many entrenched interests. You're talking about a fundamental change (that I agree would be good) to the whole justice system and its goals, which isn't practical in any sense. But in this hypothetical world where the whole justice system is changed, I might agree that jail time is something that could be on the table for speeding tickets.

However, that is not going to happen anytime soon, and certainly not all at once. While we ponder how to enact a total overhaul of the justice system, let's make speeding tickets not have jail time as a punishment.

> The goal afterall isn't punishment for punishment's sake, it's to heal the wounds to civil society caused by law breaking, repairing the relationship between the offender and the community, and bringing the offender back into the fold. If the offender doesn't have any sense of a personal relationship with the state, then punishment imposed from a distance can't meet even half of its function. Moreover, no penalty whatsoever, or one with no teeth, does absolutely nothing except reinforce the estrangement, which is worse. It's like leaving the mentally ill on the street to rot to death out of some absurd sense of individual liberty; it functions only to make the non-mentally ill feel more secure in their privileged circumstances, rather than addressing any of the real underlying issues.

This is super debatable and there are many schools of thought on the goals of punishment. Some say people should be punished for punishment's sake, and indeed the way sentences are handed out in many cases reinforces that this is the prevailing view.