Income-based fines center on the idea that a high-income individual who breaks the law should have to pay a higher fine compared to lower income individuals breaking the same law. The idea is based on the fact that the fines in place now are regressive and hurt lower income individuals which make them more accountable and more likely to obey the law. How it stands now a $100 speeding ticket to millionaire has little deterrent effect on changing their behaviors compared to lower incomes. Currently, as of now, there is no city in the United States that uses an income-based approach, in the past, there have been several cities and counties that experimented with it including Polk County, IA in 1992 ( ). It is implemented in several European countries …show more content…
Citizens on parole have risen 55 percent to 824,000. Over the same time, jail populations have risen 93 percent and prison populations have risen 311 percent. Overall there are more than 7.2 million people under correctional supervision ( ). In addition, poor Americans also face the problem of citizens being unable to pay fines because they are not adjusted to their income. Most fines come with interest and if a poor individual was only ever able to pay the minimum payment each month, their payment will keep growing. One way to counteract this trend is to introduce and expand fines by implementing day fines. This would mean targeting offenses from simple misdemeanors to lesser felonies which people are normally sent to either jail, probation or prison. By shifting to this model federal, state, and local governments can reduce their costs because jail and prison populations will decline. In addition, the laws will be more equitable with individuals across the spectrum receiving fines with the same economic sting based on their daily income. Finally, day based fines will potential increase the revenues of the state and local governments because of the additional fines that are imposed instead of prison. The following paragraphs will show how day based fines could accomplish these …show more content…
First, in 2015, the Iowa Court System collected $155.9 million in revenue from fines (xi). This revenue was then split between the state government (Iowa General Fund), cities and counties, prison infrastructure and several other projects. By following a system that has a higher collection rate for fines revenue will increase for state and local governments. There will be fewer people going to prison, jail or probation thus reducing the cost associated with building new jails and prisons, and the cost of maintaining and staffing the old prisons. The jail and prison cells will also be saved for more serious offenses. This increased revenue can go to various projects from transportation infrastructure to paying off the state deficit. This year the State of Iowa faced a budget deficit of $131 million dollars and as of 2015, the state was owed $682,720,000 in outstanding court fines (xiii). By implementing a system that takes into account a person's ability to pay a portion of this might have been repaid. Collecting just 19% of the outstanding fines would have allowed the state to pay for the budget deficit. This would have meant there would have been no slashing of funds going to cities, counties, and state universities and state
Uniquely, with such staggering numbers of multiple offenders, the criminal justice system is choosing to release the incarceration sentence of murder and aggravated assault offenders to kill more of the population in which they believe will lower the rate of violent crimes. Those are serious offenses that goes unsupported by the system but offenders who commit civil crimes such as too many traffic violations or minors who commit status offense crimes are serving time that should be thrown out. The system is losing its core values to serve and protect. In reference to the movie The Purge, it is a way the government saves money with allowing harsh offenders to continue committing crimes. The government will save money. They will not give assistance to low wage citizens for food stamps or EBT, no health insurance, no unemployment, or workers compensation if the low
High traffic fees and fines quite often cause financial difficulties for the lower class. Transportation has become a necessity over the past one hundred years. Unfortunately with the constant improvements in vehicle technologies the cost of owning and maintaining a vehicle has constantly increased. Going hand in hand with these vehicle improvements the California Vehicle Code (CVC) has become extensive, covering every possible driving mistake with a traffic infraction. Following these changes the California Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) has constantly grown to cover the needs of the 27 million vehicles (DMV update 1998, 3) owned in the state with high vehicle registration fees and traffic fines.
A 1997 RAND Corporation study found that treatment of heavy drug users was almost ten times more cost effective in reducing drug use, sales, and drug-related crime than longer mandatory sentences (Echols, 2014). Other studies have shown that mandatory penalties have no demonstrable marginal or short-term effects on overall crime reduction either. Congress established mandatory sentences in order to incarcerate high-level drug criminals, but according to the U.S. Sentencing Commission, only 11 percent of drug charged prisoners fit that description (Echols, 2014). Most of those incarcerated are low-level offenders, whose spots in drug trafficking are easily filled by other people. Mandatory minimum sentencing is essentially a waste of scarce criminal justice resources and federal funds that could be used elsewhere, and The Smarter Sentencing Act’s reduction of mandatory minimums can be the first step in eliminating minimum sentencing altogether. Ideally, given the opportunity for discretion, judges would be more inclined to issue more effective alternatives to incarceration, such as rehabilitation programs and/or
The United States has a larger percent of its population incarcerated than any other country. America is responsible for a quarter of the world’s inmates, and its incarceration rate is growing exponentially. The expense generated by these overcrowded prisons cost the country a substantial amount of money every year. While people are incarcerated for a number of reasons, the country’s prisons are focused on punishment rather than reform, and the result is a misguided system that fails to rehabilitate criminals or discourage crime. The ineffectiveness of the United States’ criminal justice system is caused by mass incarceration of non-violent offenders, racial profiling, and a high rate of recidivism.
Cohen (1985) supports this sentiment, and suggests that community based punishment alternatives have actually led to a widening and expansion of the retributive criminal justice system, rather than its abolishment. The current criminal justice system is expensive to maintain. In North America, the cost to house one prisoner is upwards of eighty to two hundred dollars a day (Morris, 2000). The bulk of this is devoted to paying guards and security (Morris, 2000).
... or minor vehicle offenses. This programs proved to be very effective in other countries like England due to the fact that they utilize this program more as an alternative to prison rather than just a condition. For that, it is hard to say whether it is effective in the United States in its current state. It might just be a problem of implementation.
Mass incarceration has caused the prison’s populations to increase dramatically. The reason for this increase in population is because of the sentencing policies that put a lot of men and women in prison for an unjust amount of time. The prison population has be caused by periods of high crime rates, by the medias assembly line approach to the production of news stories that bend the truth of the crimes, and by political figures preying on citizens fear. For example, this fear can be seen in “Richard Nixon’s famous campaign call for “law and order” spoke to those fears, hostilities, and racist underpinnings” (Mauer pg. 52). This causes law enforcement to focus on crimes that involve violent crimes/offenders. Such as, gang members, drive by shootings, drug dealers, and serial killers. Instead of our law agencies focusing their attention on the fundamental causes of crime. Such as, why these crimes are committed, the family, and preventive services. These agencies choose to fight crime by establishing a “War On Drugs” and with “Get Tough” sentencing policies. These policies include “three strikes laws, mandatory minimum sentences, and juvenile waives laws which allows kids to be trialed as adults.
It cost a lot of money to keep one prisoner taken care of with food, medical, and housing. Instead of using that tax money on a prisoner, if that funding were to go to an after school program it would be more beneficiary. More programs for schools lead to children having an activity to do after school instead of getting into some sort of mischief and then getting a criminal record which then produces a vicious cycle of criminal behavior. That criminal cycle will then continue and add to the already overpopulated prison system. The goal here it prevent the blooming of a possible juvenile delinquent into a convicted criminal it before it even starts. So using the tax money that would 've been used on a low level convict who got busted for marijuana lets say, would be used to help prevent future convict to begin with. Not only school programs, but even things that would help improve communities such as parks, job creations, etc. All these things could also help prevent future prisoners because parks are used for activity for children to gather and socialize instead of getting to criminal mischief and job creations are used to prevent being in poverty which is retrospect is one of the main reason people end up in criminal activity. So all in all as you can see, there would be so much benefits in using tax money from a low level convict to the future of our
Today, half of state prisoners are serving time for nonviolent crimes. Over half of federal prisoners are serving time for drug crimes. Mass incarceration seems to be extremely expensive and a waste of money. It is believed to be a massive failure. Increased punishments and jailing have been declining in effectiveness for more than thirty years. Violent crime rates fell by more than fifty percent between 1991 and 2013, while property crime declined by forty-six percent, according to FBI statistics. Yet between 1990 and 2009, the prison population in the U.S. more than doubled, jumping from 771,243 to over 1.6 million (Nadia Prupis, 2015). While jailing may have at first had a positive result on the crime rate, it has reached a point of being less and less worth all the effort. Income growth and an aging population each had a greater effect on the decline in national crime rates than jailing. Mass incarceration and tough-on-crime policies have had huge social and money-related consequences--from its eighty billion dollars per-year price tag to its many societal costs, including an increased risk of recidivism due to barbarous conditions in prison and a lack of after-release reintegration opportunities. The government needs to rethink their strategy and their policies that are bad
To begin, Mandatory minimum sentences result in prison overcrowding, and based on several studies, it does not alleviate crime, for example crimes such as shoplifting or solicitation. These sentencing guidelines do not allow a judge to take into consideration the first time offender, differentiate the deviance level of the offender, and it does not allow for the judge to alter a punishment or judgment to each individual case. When mandatory sentencing came into effect, the drug lords they were trying to stop are not the ones being affected by the sentences. It is the nonviolent, low-level drug users who are overcrowding the prisons as a result of these sentences. Both the U.S. Sentencing Commission and the Department of Justice have determined that mandatory sentencing is not an effective way to deter crime. Studies show that mandatory minimums have gone downhill due to racial a...
For county jails, the problem of cost and recidivism is exacerbated by budgetary constraints and various state mandates. Due to the inability of incarceration to satisfy long-term criminal justice objectives and the very high expenditures associated with the sanction, policy makers at various levels of government have sought to identify appropriate alternatives (Luna-Firebaugh, 2003, p.51-66). I. Alternatives to incarceration give courts more options. For example, it’s ridiculous that the majority of the growth in our prison populations in this country is due to people being slamming in jail just because they were caught using drugs. So much of the crime on the streets of our country is drug-related.
In the United States, prison, or rather incarceration, is the most common type of punishment that is dispensed to criminals by the criminal justice system once they have been convicted. Looking back half a century ago, the rate of incarceration in the united states was still low and almost similar to those of countries such as Denmark and Finland. However, the last three decades or so have seen the rise of mass incarceration as a punitive criminal justice measure in the United States to the extent where a greater proportion of the population are incarcerated than in any other country. Incarceration usually involves the locking up of offenders in prisons where they are subjected to harsh and restrictive conditions. However, the use of prisons to lock up offenders and punish them has been largely
More are sentencing options are great because just like every person is different, so is the crime. Prison may not always be the most effective response for people, so If courts have options other than incarceration, “they can better tailor a cost-effective sentence that fits the offender and the crime, protects the public, and provides rehabilitation” (FAMM, 2011). Findings have also proven that alternative saves taxpayers money. “It costs over $28,000 to keep one person in federal prison for one year1 (some states’ prison costs are much higher). Alternatives to incarceration are cheaper, help prevent prison and jail overcrowding, and save taxpayers millions” (FAMM, 2011, para. 3). Lastly, alternatives protect the public by reducing crime. There is a 40% chance that all people leaving prison will go back within three years of their release (FAMM, 2011). “Alternatives to prison such as drug and mental health courts are proven to confront the underlying causes of crime (i.e., drug addiction and mental illness) and help prevent offenders from committing new crimes” (FAMM, 2011, para.
Overcrowding in our state and federal jails today has become a big issue. Back in the 20th century, prison rates in the U.S were fairly low. During the years later due to economic and political factors, that rate began to rise. According to the Bureau of justice statistics, the amount of people in prison went from 139 per 100,000 inmates to 502 per 100,000 inmates from 1980 to 2009. That is nearly 261%. Over 2.1 million Americans are incarcerated and 7.2 million are either incarcerated or under parole. According to these statistics, the U.S has 25% of the world’s prisoners. (Rick Wilson pg.1) Our prison systems simply have too many people. To try and help fix this problem, there needs to be shorter sentences for smaller crimes. Based on the many people in jail at the moment, funding for prison has dropped tremendously.
Most people have the common view that the criminal justice system’s increasing arrests and imprisonment is an effective strategy for reducing crime. If the judicial system makes greater distinction among violent and nonviolent crimes, the prisons will have the vacancies to incarcerate the Jeffery Dahmers of the world in prison for life. By providing alternatives to imprisonment for nonviolent offenders will reduce the burden of taxpayer’s dollars for added funding for construction of new prisons. I know as a College Student I would like to see increased State funding for education system rather than the millions allocated to the prison system of Pennsylvania.