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Comment by mattlutze | Hacker News Reader

Yes.

Simple penalties create classes of crime; wealthy folks just ignore the penalty on double parking some poor schmuck because who cares about a $100 fine when you're making $1M?

These regulations are written to discourage unfair acts or behavior that exploites the social contract. It tells folks that the municipality thinks it's right for less-wealthy people to be burdened with providing comforts for more-wealthy people.

Means-tested fines actually get to the point of it: dissuade all people from doing something dangerous, indefensibly rude, et cetera, and not just poor folks.

For some additional discussion: https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/03/finland...

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Should rich people get less jail time because they lose more money because of time spent in jail (per day income is higher) than a poor person.

Should a person with more children get less jail time because more children will be left without a parent as compared to a childless person.

I can't tell if you're being sarcastic or if these are genuine questions. I suspect the former, in which case you need to unpack your arguments a bit more.

parking is a monetary fine, and thus directly related to the earnings of an individual.

Preventing a good parent from caring for thier child for an unrelated mistake should be somthing the courts take extreemly heavily.

Jepodizing a business that employees people might will be taken into account.

A fine example of whataboutism.

FWIW, both the country where I was born and the one where I live have chosen a simple approximation: Fines are set at "x typical daily earnings" and the court will estimate the equivalent in legal tender, jail time is set in days.

I disagree that it's a "fine example of whataboutism", I think it's more 'apples and oranges'. How would you define whataboutism, or why do you think that it applies here?

Well, yes, that orange exists, but whatabout this apple? Typically with a clear and relevant difference between the two, and not mentioning that difference.

Incarceration by itself is poorly correlated to the goal of reducing overall crime and reducing recidivism. Putting people in prison should be a last resort, instead of the first resort that the US and some other countries treat it as.

Regarding jail time for the wealthy, you're still thinking in simple numbers instead of means-tested comparisons. A more-wealthy person and a less-wealthy person that go to jail for 30 days both are physically restricted for 8% of a year. If you pretend that wealthy people earn the same way that less-wealthy people do (they don't), then both are naievely losing 8% of their income-earning time for that year.

It's still not fair, mind you—the wealthy person likely makes much or most of their money from diversified income streams that are less succeptable to temporary incarceration than the more-likely single salary-based income of a less-wealthy person.

Regarding the question of using children as leverage, this is addressed more intricately than I'll summarize here in contemporary cases e.g. with Elizabeth Holmes and the allegation that she, her partner and legal team have tried to lean on her having children as a way to attempt avoiding incarceration.

If you care primarily about the financial impact of jail, then that would be an argument for the opposite of what you suggest: A rich person is likely to be less affected by the loss of a days income than a poor person, and so if the financial value of the time spent in jail was all that mattered then rich people ought to be imprisoned longer for the same crime, not shorter.

Since the financial impact is not the main consideration of jail time, it shouldn't be major factor.

With respect to children, children whose parents are imprisoned are more at risk of future problems, and so irrespective of other considerations it may well be preferable to society to take it into account.

> Should a person with more children get less jail time because more children will be left without a parent as compared to a childless person.

Elizabeth Holmes seems to be counting on this one.

Shouldn't childless people get less time in prison, so they have more opportunities to find partners to get children?

I was thinking of this in context of wars. Where people with children should be first to be send in front lines. With those with most offspring being higher priority. And those with none the lowest.

> Should rich people get less jail time because they lose more money because of time spent in jail (per day income is higher) than a poor person.

No. The point is that fines should be based on per-day income or some kind of similar measure of wealth. Which actually makes it consistent with the hypothetical economic punishments of being thrown in jail.

According to The World Economic Forum (WEF) speeding tickets in Finland are linked to your income.^1 This means that a speeding ticket is calculated as a percentage of your income, and so the fine will also scale with whatever you make.

[1]: https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2018/06/in-finland-speeding-t...

Unless your money doesn't come from your "salary", and you declare "the salary" to be $1 a year. Then you pay nothing for double parking even if you're firthy rich.

Also dividends and unearned income are calculated into the income which of the fines are calculated from.

So unless you spend money you got from selling stuff year or two back you still have to pay.

Is that really true, though? As far as I know it's based on disposable income after tax and necesary living expenses. Meanwhile if it's a businessman without a stated income that year, the court may still base the fine on net worth, assets and investments. I would love it if a Finish person could expand upon this, though.

Where we live it's cheaper to risk a street cleaning ticket ($45 a week, if you get one) than to put it in a garage (300-400 per month)

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