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Reupping this with extensive commentary in response to a former student who asked why I think this is great news. It occurs to me that this isn't obvious, so here's my attempt to explain why I think this is a step in the right direction. 1/
Incarceration should be used sparingly, and we should ensure that any loss of liberty is imposed fairly. Why? There are constitutional requirements for the fairness (as well as moral ones), incarceration is destructive and often iatrogenic, and it's resource intensive.
We should have good reasons for incarcerating people, and we should have particularly strong reasons for incarcerating some offenders and not others who have done the same thing.
Imprisoning someone who can't pay fines and fees doesn't make us safer, it's destructive to the social fabric of poor communities, it affects any children the offender has, it tends (like all other areas of criminal law) to have racially disparate effects.
It's also ultimately more expensive (the woman in this case was incarcerated for more than a hundred days-that's easily $10K worth of resources spent). What are we getting for that money? Think what else could we spend it on that would improve the community, or her.
It's also bad policy not to means test. Means testing means that the fine means the same thing to everyone (sorry, trying to have a little fun with my wording on a Friday).
We should means test all offenders-not just to reduce fines for the poor, but to raise them for the rich. Any justification for criminal sanctions requires that they do something (or express something).
I'm not sure what they say (the marginal value of a dollar depends on your wealth) and I'm not sure what they do (in terms of affecting behavior--either of the offender, or through general deterrence, etc.).
So take a $500 fine. Given that over 40 percent of Americans in the general population can't pay that amount in an emergency, a $500 fine will have no effect on behavior for the poor.
There's no choice to be made. That amount is unpayable. (And for someone whose original "offense" was not paying parking tickets, it's even more unlikely that she'll be able to pay the fine).
Meanwhile, $500 bucks is nothing to a rich person. It won't really register.
Fines and fees need to be painful but payable in the first instance and payable but painful in the second. Otherwise, to the poor, fines are just the fig leaf covering a policy of de facto incarceration, and to the rich, it hardly involves a second thought.
But, ultimately, the meat of the issue is that we should use incarceration sparingly and have good reasons to do so. Moving the system in a more rational direction is a good thing.
And the way to improve the situation is to get people help. The root cause of her offending (which is really, really minor, and not worthy of incapacitation) is poverty and mental illness. That doesn't get better behind bars.
So even if you want to promote public safety, jailing someone due to poverty is a lousy way to do it. And we're not even touching on any of the moral reasons, which, in my view, aren't even close.
