Hacker News Reader

They do, when it comes to civil forfeiture/seizure [1]... not sure about lawsuits.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Civil_forfeiture_in_the_U...

Article is about a german company.

In Germany, fines go to the general state or federal budget, not the police budget.

The only thing where there is a really obvious wrong incentive are parking violations, those go to the community, the community prosecutes and sets the local parking regs. So that, along with speeding tickets inside city limits (in parts), is a money-printing business for them.

At least smaller Communities are very much restricted what they can do with regards to speeding. That's the reason why there are posts everywhere which show your actual speed instead of giving a ticket.

I’m in the UK. The fines go to the Treasury, so the central purse.

If fines were distributed to the public and the ICO collected zero income, I believe the political will do finance it would disappear. I was not suggesting officers themselves would change priorities based on individual pay outs, sorry for the confusion.