In Kansas driving with a suspended license carries a mandatory minimum of 5 days in jail up to a year. My prison punishment was an example of a draconian punishment.. but people DO go to prison for duis. Kansas has a somewhat unique harsh and fast law style on misdemeanors and the lowest level of felonies .

But yes in Kansas they do send people to jail for a year for driving on a suspended license if you’re belligerent even if it’s a first offense.

It’s not surprising your state would have less enforcement on this. Wisconsin is a historic and also current beer capital. Kansas is a historic prohibition state.

Edit: my friend who was a cute upper middle class teen was arrested three times in Kansas for driving on a suspended license. They let her plead out of it two times( paying 7k in fines) and then the third time they made her do the minimum 5 days in jail.

Edit again oddly full circle: Paris Hilton was arrested for a first offense driving with a suspended license and spent three weeks in jail. Compare that to my friend or inso example; that’s why I know the charges against her were bs.

You don't want to get caught driving on a suspended in California. It's more serious than people think. Probably not 3 week sentence serious but can definitely get you thrown in county.

Another post where i simply do not see you being honest with reality.

Getting tickets that are not paid eventually ends in bench warrants that are not necessarily chased but when you get stopped subsequently result in arrest and a first criminal record on your file.

This is one of the main ways minority and poor communities are targeted by policing that leads to disproportional later more serious charges and jail time.

A person gets cited for jaywalking, DWB, or some minor offenses. Tickets don't get paid and when stopped later that leads to an arrest and search and they caught with marijuana and a more serious charge follows. The pattern of offenses (this is a second or third offences) then becomes used against them to justify harsher punishments.

People like you then say 'sure but they were jaywalking ...they did not pay the ticket ... they did have marijuana ... thus 'justified'.' Meanwhile the guy uptown goes to his investment banker job with his cocaine in his pocket and simply is never submitted to this process so it is never found and he does not have the track record.

Assuming all of that is 100% true, is it your contention that we should not be throwing those people in jail? If so, what is your solution to prevent people from simply ignoring any and all tickets or minor offenses that don't come with mandatory jail sentences?

You and I pay our fines because that's what you do in polite society, and I certainly don't want any serious derogatory marks on my record. You and I are not the kind of people who get thrown in prison. So given that America apparently has a lot of people who don't feel the same way, what do you do about them? Ask them nicely to stop being deadbeats?


To me, your post looks like a split between being upset about the escalating nature of law enforcement, and also being mad that the guy with the cocaine isn't doing time along the guy selling bags of weed. So either we simply stop using loss of freedom as a form of punishment for anything but the harshest of crimes, or you think we don't have enough people in prison. If it's more of the former, then again I'd ask you what you do with people who can't behave themselves.


Just so everyone is clear on the stakes in some of the countries you regard so highly:

Based on my limited Googling, it seems Norway is a big fan of sending people to jail when they refuse to pay fines. Admittedly, their sentences are pretty short and it's unclear if the 3 week vacation makes the fine go away.

I am more attacking your view as to what 'deserved' means.

I have met many people who base their reasoning around 'the law is the law, so if you break it you deserve jail time' and that is regardless of the law being an a$$ or unjust and/or the tactics that lead to arrest being unfair/unjust.


We know that if we take a random large school in any neighbourhood (poor or affluent) and we insert and stifling police presence with full power to randomly search and question, that a school that had 'no crime' prior will suddenly have lots of crime. Meanwhile the school right next door without that presence and the same student profile remains 'crime' free not because they did anything different but because they don't have that stifling presence of police.

Police will start to find things and guys like Brett Kavanaugh and Bill Clinton will end up with some charges.

You cite mass numbers of them with these misdemeanor offenses early, and a percent do not pay their fines and that leads to more serious charges and arrests.

Every engagement with the system thereafter, especially since that stifling police presence is still there than leads to a much higher eventual incarceration rate. Suddenly that 'marijuana' you say does not lead to jail time does because its part of a 'pattern' of other offenses.

My experience is that guys who think as you do, say 'ya and so what', while ignoring this process never "deserved" to get kicked off the way it did in the first place.

That was a lot of words to ultimately refuse to answer the question from that first sentence.

You can talk about Schrödinger's criminals all you want but you're still ignoring the fact that a vast majority of those incarcerated are not in for the marijuana you keep going on and on about.

This is clearly not how it works, or guys with 31 tickets for driving without a license wouldn't be on the road to ultimately kill someone. I honestly cannot follow your objections. I've already conceded that I don't think someone with personal drugs don't deserve to be locked up, unless they're high at the time where they inflict harm on someone else.

I speed on the way to work, and I've been known to treat red lights in the middle of the night as a 4 way stop. We all break the law. Is that what you're trying to get out of me? I'm not worried about being sent to prison for either of those offenses, and nor should you be. However, what if I run every red light even during heavy traffic, and completely ignore speed limits as a matter of habit, resulting in dozens of citations that I also ignore. What should be done to me?

No doubt. She had multiple issues in a pretty tight time frame. So the driving on a susp lic. etc was a prob. violation. And in Ca you can def. get tossed in jail for those.

Bro, have you ever seen a Norweigen prison? I would choose to live there voluntarily, they are pretty sweet.

We have minimum security prisons here, too. Foosball tables, libraries, and in-cell TVs aren't unique to Norway.

The annual murder count in Norway is a slow summer weekend in Chicago. Their prisons are not dealing with the same sort of clientele.

As long as they stay in a box, I'm cool with making it a nice box. Maybe write your congresswoman and push for change.

I don’t know where the quote is from, but it is absolute nonsense. There is no income-based fines for speeding in Norway, only fixed amounts. The fines are stiff, but nowhere near the claimed amount in your quote. Nor is there a «mandatory jail time» for «excessive speed». There is a penal code that sets down potential punishment that can be used for very severe speed violations.

I see some weird stuff in here, but it is rare to see something quoted where pretty much every single bit of information is wrong.

The only Nordic country with wage-based fines for speeding is Finland, but that is half daily income after necessary expenses have been subtracted, not a tenth of your yearly income.

I see the 10% of your income all over the first page of Google when you search for Norway Speeding Tickets, but the point stands that they probably don't take the USA approach of just letting people rack them up over time and not do anything about it.


Found this though: https://lovdata.no/dokument/SF/forskrift/1990-06-29-492

The schedule only goes up to 15mph over the limit, and the fine is a little over $1000. Maybe the income penalties are folk lore, or maybe that's what happens when you go more than 15 over the limit. Can hardly blame me for the initial post given what the first few pages of Google say when you search for speeding tickets and norway.

There is no income penalties, no. I’m pretty certain only Finland does that in the Nordic countries. But this one probably stems from viral stories from Finland and Switzerland, where some very high earners have gotten some immense fines - which through the internet whisper game has become another country and «10% of your income.»

And yes, it is a honest mistake. Internet folklore can be pervasive.

The take on not getting away with fines is correct. Your license has a points system which will be checked on-site (license lost etc.) If you don’t pay, the money will eventually just be deducted from your income (with some hefty interest rates and fees). If it is still not paid you can potentially end in jail.

For severe violations (the limits change with the base speed limit), you can’t just do a fine. There will be a trial, and jailtime can happen.

The quote is from Inso, four posts above me. No idea where he got that info from.