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Comment by Mordisquitos | Hacker News Reader

One could always establish a minimum-living income that was immune to fines based on ratio of income, or consider specific expenditures to be protected from the calculation (e.g. rent or cost of travel to work). However, I can see how that could eventually lead to the truism becoming "If the penalty for a crime is an income-ratio fine, then that law only exists for the middle class, and not for the lower or upper class" which would be... interesting.

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When it comes to civil litigation, the poor and insolvent are already often considered judgment-proof [1]. So you could say we already have a little of that “laws exist only for the middle class” scenario.

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judgment_proof

I've often wondered whether penalties should target reputation more than they do, which would affect all classes of criminal including upper class. For example, as part of the sentence for violent crimes, the government could mail official press releases about the crime to all households in the area periodically for a certain amount of time after the conviction, or put up signs, at the criminal's expense (with a government cost-sharing for poorer criminals beyond whatever cost society would view appropriate to fine them - but mail and signage aren't that expensive). And companies convicted of a crime might have to fund government notifications of their crime to their customers and store/office visitors.

Details might need tweaking, but a version of this could really work.

I see what you are getting at. Do you think it could go a bit overboard though? That it makes people kind of take the law into their own hands?

There's a risk of that, yes. As I said, the details need tweaking. It would be especially helpful for wealthy, powerful, and/or corporate criminals who are probably paying for good private security regardless of their criminal record/sentence or lack thereof.

I do believe that the shame-feeling part of society is generally less likely to commit crimes. That is, it would work on them, but it wouldn't work on someone who does not care what their neighbors think of them.

A lot of companies and businesspeople care what their customers and the general public think, at least.

or teenagers/young adults in a rebellious state of mind. If you like to provoke and your circle of friends feels the same then you're not shamed.

Here in Denmark fines for drunk driving, driving while influenced by drugs, and driving while your license is suspended is income dependent. The exact fine is also dependent on your blood toxicity levels. And if you are under 18 or have a low income you can get half off the fine.

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