https://www.fitsnews.com/2019/08/21/south-carolina-women-goe...
https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2000-jan-06-me-51449...
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2798209/angry-woman...
https://homeimprovementnewsjournal.com/man-arrested-for-shoo...
I invite you to search on your own if you require further evidence, and if you do choose to do so, I hope the search terms above help save you time.
#1: Woman was arrested for contempt of court
#2: Man was arrested for violating terms of probation
#3: This seems to fit the narrative, but, I quote: "The judge admitted that [unkempt-lawn-haver] is not a criminal and it was not a criminal case." It appears that a judge gave her the option of community service or 6 hours in jail to waive a (civil) fine?
#4: Appears to be about police arresting someone who shot lawnmowers with a gun
Interesting.
As my history represents, I do quite often spend an unusually high amount of time in discussions on the site, sometimes farther into the weeds than the site generally has good UI for, when people are engaging with a conscious desire to converse, even when we disagree. I rarely choose to end participation in a thread before the other persons tires of replying, but I make a special exception for threads about gender and race, because in those areas there are known conversational tactics that involve draining time and credibility through sealioning.
As your history represents, you have on multiple occasions attempted to change the course of conversations about race and racism from race and racism to anything but race and racism, which does not suggest that it's productive to engage with you at length on the topic of racism that I'm discussing here today. Whether or not we'd end up agreeing, it's not useful to others for me to enable that for you, and it's not the conversation I'm here to have today. You are of course welcome to start your own thread with your beliefs, but I'm not required to help you do so. I understand this will feed into whatever conspiracy theory you're trying to promote, but I have dessert waiting in the kitchen and that's more important to me right now than your opinion of me.
I encourage you to email any complaints you have about my behavior here to the mods directly to the address in the footer contact link, but I must also advise that you'll find that HN guidelines are not compatible with implied accusations of bad faith behavior in the manner you're doing here. As the guidelines indicate, if you feel that I am participating in bad faith on HN, email the mods.
https://features.propublica.org/medical-debt/when-medical-de...
Also there is worse happening, like where a city in I think MO was using yard upkeep fines and their nonpayment to put people in jail and then condemn their house so that it could be seized for property development.
Before someone notes this is extremely bloodthirsty, it's not just about a lawn being cut, it's about the state arbitrarily demanding your money.
The quote from the judge in 3 makes it clear that the woman in question was never charged with a criminal offense, and in fact chose to sit in a jail for 6 hours in lieu of paying a civil fine.
As for the other two cases - the issues started with the lawn upkeep, yes, but the criminal aspect slips in for unrelated reasons. In #1, it's not clear exactly why contempt charges came into play, and it's quite unusual (and in many jurisdictions, not legal) to charge someone with criminal contempt for simple refusal to pay a civil fine...which leads me to believe there's something key being omitted here. In #2, it seems like the guy would have been fine keeping an unkempt lawn had he not explicitly violated a previous probation agreement; this isn't a situation that applies to the average person.
1. A rich, or legally crafty individual can get a court to invalidate the demand, or tie up the issue in legal process for years or indefinitely.
2. The government will escalate until the individual is in jail.
Jail isn't the first step in the enforcement process, but it's on the list, and fair to say that people were jailed because they didn't maintain their lawns to government standards following other enforcement efforts.