There’s always gonna be these people knowingly breaking the law if they can easily afford the fines. Do you think she would keep driving without her seat belt and smoking wherever she pleases if she was fined say 10% of her yearly income every time she was caught?

    • stoy@lemmy.zip
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      9 months ago

      Hey, Finland is just one of several coutries using dayfines:

      Germany, Denmark (partly), Finland, Macau, Sweden and Switzerland.

      The UK tried it, but it was unpopular, the US has experimented with it, but currently only Oklahoma has taken steps to implement it.

        • stoy@lemmy.zip
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          9 months ago

          The court sentences a person to say 28 day fines based on the severity of the crime, the day fine’s value is determined by the income of the person sentenced.

          So a rich guy will pay far more for the same infraction than a poor guy.

          The system is meant to equalize the concequenses regardless of how much moneybyou have.

        • DarkMessiah@lemmy.world
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          9 months ago

          So, a day fine is when there’s a base minimum fine for things, but the actual fine beyond that is based on the income of the person who received it. You earn more beyond a certain amount, you pay more sort of thing.

          It actually makes fines useful as a deterrent for the rich instead of a price-of-entry, though I’m of the opinion that anyone who makes above a certain amount who would earn a fine should earn jail time instead.

          • Kecessa@sh.itjust.works
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            9 months ago

            I’m of the opinion that anyone who makes above a certain amount who would earn a fine should earn jail time instead.

            That goes against the spirit of democracy and laws. Why should someone rich go to jail for speeding alone on the highway while a middle class parent could do the exact same infraction with their kids in the car and just pay a ticket?

        • Jesus_666@feddit.de
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          9 months ago

          Now, others have already explained that is a fine based on a days’ earnings (usually estimated from annual income). I’d like to add that implementing this for companies is why EU legislation like the GDPR is so fearsome.

          If a company violates the GDPR badly enough¹ they can be fined up to 4% of their annual revenue or 20 million euros, whichever is higher. No matter what size that company is, that kind of fine hurts enough to be a deterrent. And suddenly everyone is very interested in following the law, even the guys with bigger budgets than some countries.


          ¹ Less egregious violations have halved max fines. Still enough to be really painful.

      • MudMan@kbin.social
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        9 months ago

        There are more than that.

        Source: we use them and we’re not on that list. Kinda weird that Macau snuck in there before us, honestly. Maybe because here there are hard amount caps and in practice the system is used more as a tool to update fine amounts at intervals than as a hard math way to relate to income? I don’t know if that ends up being the case in other places applying the system.

          • MudMan@kbin.social
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            9 months ago

            I don’t typically broadcast that. Not that you couldn’t put it together if you stalked me for a while. But also, maybe don’t do that if I don’t broadcast it.