re: Ex-LSP officer unloads; explains how LEO tickets are a $-making operation

quote:

---

How one ticket could literally bury a person who struggles in poverty to feed their children. They are then forced to choose between paying a ticket or a light bill. Lose your lights or be buried under tickets that continue to pile up until you have no other recourse than to sit in jail or make payments for year.

---

quote:

---

how we should just go ahead and make everything legal.

---

quote:

---

This is just idiotic. If the citation is something like a tail light then I can kind of see where he’s coming from but part of a police officer’s duties, is to enforce the law and that means writing citations for traffic violations.

---

quote:

---

I guess the moral of the story is be extra careful in Lake Charles?

---

quote:

---

The common thread in these cases, and scores more like them, is the jail time wasn't punishment for the crime, but for the failure to pay the increasing fines and fees associated with the criminal justice system.

A yearlong NPR investigation found that the costs of the criminal justice system in the United States are paid increasingly by the defendants and offenders. It's a practice that causes the poor to face harsher treatment than others who commit identical crimes and can afford to pay. Some judges and politicians fear the trend has gone too far.

---

quote:

---

It's unconstitutional for the state of Tennessee to continue revoking driver's licenses from people who can't pay court costs, a federal judge determined Monday.

The ruling from U.S. District Judge Aleta Trauger will have broad national and state ramifications, said Claudia Wilner, a senior attorney with the National Center for Law and Economic Justice in New York City who worked on the case.

---

quote:

---

The letter says the fees are illegal when imposed on indigent defendants, who account for the vast majority of convictions in New Orleans.

Thousands and perhaps tens of thousands of defendants may have been subject to the illegal fees, Kristen Clarke, the president and executive director of the lawyers group, said in a statement. She asked the judges to stop imposing the fees immediately.

---

quote:

---

The Justice Department is asking local courts across the country to be wary of how they slap poor defendants with fines and fees to fill their jurisdictions’ coffers, warning that such practices often run afoul of the U.S. Constitution and have serious real-world consequences.

In a letter that will be sent Monday morning to the chief judges and court administrators in all 50 states, Vanita Gupta, the head of the department’s Civil Rights Division, and Lisa Foster, director of the Office for Access to Justice, wrote that illegal enforcement of fines and fees had been receiving increased attention in recent years, and the Justice Department had a “strong interest” in making sure the rights of citizens were protected.

---

quote:

---

what’s the problem?

---