See https://www.npr.org/2014/08/25/343143937/in-ferguson-court-f... for an explanation of how this helped ignite the racial tension that Ferguson had a few years ago.
> This edition of Crossing Continents goes out and about in St Louis County to meet the people who say they are victims of a system which sees arrest warrants issued for relatively minor misdemeanours. Many of the victims are poor and black. The programme also takes us into the courts, and out onto the freeways with some of the County's police, who say they are upholding the law and promoting road safety.
> The US government is not so sure. One of the towns in question is Ferguson where riots erupted after a white police officer shot a young black man dead last summer. In a recent report on the riots, the Department of Justice concluded that the Ferguson police had been stopping people for no good reason. It said they were putting revenue before public safety.
So what should the government do if someone doesn't pay their fine?
Just go through the process of taking the money instead, no different then a civil party who was owed a legitimate debt? There is no reason a fine should be any different. Just go through the standard process, get a court order for lien, and then just seize the money from any bank accounts, liquid assets, salary, or property of any value the person in question has (or ever will have in the future up to the statute of limitations). In fact the only real difference is that I don't think a fine is dischargeable in bankruptcy.
But why do you think there is any need to use force against the person in question, or pay to imprison them? It's not some moral issue, it's just a matter of them legitimately owing money. So just take the money (possibly allowing the working out of a payment plan). For the vast majority of cases that's all that's needed, and the few who truly live as hermits can be written off and suffer their own effective punishment anyway.
There's a big difference between someone not paying a fine because their flat-out broke and not paying it because "fuck the system, I'm above the law."
Zero-Tolerance and One-Size-Fits-All policies are destructively stupid and result in bad outcomes. Context matters in a system of jurisprudence, but ignoring it makes the lives of those implementing and managing them easier though, which is probably the point.
No. There should never be jail for debt. We have a lot of history seeing what debtors prison looks like and it's ugly, and also stupid because it's the government paying out a lot of money... to collect a bit of money? Usually paying out far more then the fine is anyway. Plus opportunity cost. Plus any value lost to society from whatever that person might have done outside of prison. Plus any extra cost that comes from them getting turned far worse while in prison. If someone has zero money, and will never in the future have any money, then sure blood can't be squeezed from stone and it's still better to write it off (or change the statute to require different recompense like service if it's deemed that important) than jail them. If they do have any money/property, or ever will collect any money/property down the road, that can be taken in due course.
Maybe there's a middle ground where fines are punishing for repeat offenders, but ordinary folks who show up in court get a few slaps on the wrist before fines kick in? Are some of the laws already structured like this?