I like this alot.....

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/news/article.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10619649

I've always been a strong advocate for this kind of system. The reason being that the purpose of a penalty is to make the offender feel punished, therefore having a standard punishment determined by the severity of the crime is only part of a good system but it falls short of achieving the desired effect on certain offenders.

Ideally a punishment should be determined by the severity of the offence AND relevant characteristics of the offender, ie; the offender's income in this particular case. I think it's a great move, wouldn't mind seeing it in NZ - also extrapolated to the criminal justice system rather than just for traffic offences.

Don't know how the link thing works on the new biggie so you'll have to copy & paste.....

absolutely unbelievable isnt it !!! lol

what happens to those with no income (or a very small one) and no assets?

concept has some merit

Same thing that happens at the moment it is discounted. However at the moment the fines arent increased to account for people who are more able to pay.

I don't like this idea at all. Punishment must fit the crime, not the unique characteristics of the offender. If a peniless thug speeds at 200km/h and a rich businessman does the same, they have both committed the same crime, their punishment should be the same (or relatively similar). In NZ we have a system of treating like cases alike, and that is one of the cornerstones of our justice system.

If the megarich are flagrantly disregarding road rules, as described in the linked article, then indeed hitting them where it hurts (the wallet) is a good idea. Especially where they are repeatedly offending, the courts could justify fining them considerable amounts in order to deter them from further offending. And I would have no problem with that. But the idea that if you are wealthy ipso facto your speeding ticket is 3 or 5 or 10 times more than the standard fee, is grossly unfair.

the thing is bellamysgirl , its no punishment at all when it doesnt deprive you of anything due to it being insignificant in your budget.

and what of all these youth accruing these fines way in excess of their ability to pay? at the moment they are being wiped (in favour of some lesser punishment?) and they are receving the message that there is no consequence to their action - all good by your book it would seem

yes, a single $200 fine to a multi-millionaire is nothing. but if they are repeatedly offending, or racing or driving dangerously then there is justification of giving them a much greater fine as a deterrent. what I cannot agree with is having people being pulled over by a cop for speeding (take the usual one-off 10 or 15 km over the limit) and then having their fines adjusted according to their annual income. it means that punishment has little to do with the offence and everything to do with the financial status of the offender.

Seriously?

Of course it's dependent on the offence.

For use of a better term, it's an interaction effect, where both the severity of the offence and the financial status of the offender are taken into account when determining the punishment.

Also, I'm pretty sure I recall you defending situations in which John in a highly paid job essentially gets less of a punishment than Sione on the dole because, for example, jail time would be more detrimental to John's life than Sione's.

^^ Am I recalling this correctly or just making stuff up now?

I'm not sure if I defended that position in the past, but that would be the corrolary of the present situation, and wouldn't people be up in arms if Sione had to rot in jail a few more years than his rich counterpart just because of his financial status?

I think punishment should primarily and predominantly relate to the offence, with adjustment for personal circumstances of the offender in so far as they are relevant to the offence. The fact that you are rich is not relevant to the offence of speeding. Moreover, I think personal circumstances should only ever mitigate rather than aggravate your punishment - but that's because I'm soft, and also because I don't believe that hard line punitive reponses really work anyway.

But part of the offence is made up of the motivation of the offender isn't it BG?

this whole debate is daft (at least re traffic offences)

what really hurts people is not the fine but the DEMERIT points attached

100 = suspended licence

whether rich or poor

not hard to rack up 100 points with 2 or 3 speeding offences

BG, isn't the penalty here, at it's root, a deprivation of the benefits that would come from being to spend that money alternatively?
At extremes, fining someone on low income/low wealth $200 could greatly affect what they eat, wear or drive. Fining Peter Jackson the same amount would have no such effect.

I agree that a common punishment for an offence is the goal - fining a fixed amount doesn't do that like a proportional one would.

BG doesn't understand harm. Neither do most libertarians, oddly (such as when I suggested that in a finite universe, any existence by definition harms others)

Yep that's here... things are different overseas though. In many places you can just continue to pay fines without risk of losing your license.



gc.

Isn't that exactly his point? With a fixed dollar fine the level of punishment is not even remotely the same. One man works a week to pay it and the other only an hour?? Why not dock a days income and be done with it.

Not that I would personally want this implemented, I kinda like the idea of slowly earning my way out of the clutches of the law mauhahaha

-

btw; Is the fine really the punishment anyway?

Break the law, get punished.
Break the law, pay some money, no punishment... himmm

the difference is the quantity of factors people are willing to include in the crime

i would favour this:
person of high personal wealth is caught speeding at 15km above the speed limit vs. person of low personal wealth is caught speeding at 15km above the speed limit

over this:
person is caught speeding at 15km above the speed limit vs. person is caught speeding at 15km above the speed limit

also, there is talk of punishing people 'fairly'. does this mean that we punish them equally by quantity (same dollar amount), or by relative value (same percentage amount or, say, yearly income)?

Well the easy way would be to remove the fine altogether and just make it so people who break a law get a number of days in community service or jail or something. That way each person loses the value of that day.

Of course this wont work for people who have dependants and is hardly a punishment for someone without something to do each day like work.
I think a better answer is to adjust the punishments of repeat offenders, generally.

If someone has 3 drink driving/ driving while disqualified offences then taking their licence away obviously was working, try something else. Take their car away from them, make them attend road crashes, observe in a hospital A&E Ward.

Customise the punishment to their (repeat) crimes based on their circumstances.