It sucks getting a speeding ticket, because in many cases for young adults like myself it means choosing to pay off the ticket before buying groceries or other essentials. For many laws, the penalty is often a fine, which is left unpaid can result in additional fines and can even be the reason for serving time in prison. If the penalty of breaking the law is a fine, then the law only applies to the people that a fine would impact.
Take the Texas abortion law, for example. The penalty for breaking that law is the possibility of being sued for a minimum of $10,000, but if you can afford to pay out $10,000 you can afford to break this law however many times you can afford it. This means that this law will only affect those who cannot afford to pay these fines. This law is especially insane to me, as if someone needs to get an abortion because they cannot afford to raise a child, then fining them $10,000 seems to be a disservice to both the woman who needs an abortion and the child the law pretends to protect.
People who can’t afford to pay their fines often end up in more trouble than people who can, even if the person who pays their fine commits the same crime multiple times. If we use speeding tickets as an example, people can get several speeding tickets before eventually getting their license revoked, but if you get one speeding ticket you can’t afford you could get even more fines tacked onto the original fine. If they could not afford to pay the original fine, then they also cannot afford to pay additional fines and may even end up serving a short jail sentence as a result. It is a black hole of punishment for people who already may not be able to afford to make ends meet, whereas if a $300 ticket is not a big deal to you, you do not really have to worry about speeding.
Fines being used to enforce laws and touted as a way to keep the peace are not true, because they are only quote-on-quote keeping the peace among populations that already struggle to make ends meet. It is not fair that the wealthier the person, the less laws they have to consider. In a nation where wealth distribution is becoming increasingly polarized, fines are no longer an effective way to enforce laws, because that means that the laws are only applicable to the poor.
