SEE, IF ALL FINES WENT TO THE STATE’S GENERAL FUND, THIS WOULDN’T HAPPEN: How municipalities in St. Louis County, Mo., profit from poverty. “Some of the towns in St. Louis County can derive 40 percent or more of their annual revenue from the petty fines and fees collected by their municipal courts. A majority of these fines are for traffic offenses, but they can also include fines for fare-hopping on MetroLink (St. Louis’s light rail system), loud music and other noise ordinance violations, zoning violations for uncut grass or unkempt property, violations of occupancy permit restrictions, trespassing, wearing ‘saggy pants,’ business license violations and vague infractions such as ‘disturbing the peace’ or ‘affray’ that give police officers a great deal of discretion to look for other violations. In a white paper released last month (PDF), the ArchCity Defenders found a large group of people outside the courthouse in Bel-Ridge who had been fined for not subscribing to the town’s only approved garbage collection service. They hadn’t been fined for having trash on their property, only for not paying for the only legal method the town had designated for disposing of trash. . . . Residents of these towns feel as if their governments see them as little more than sources of revenue. To many residents, the cops and court officers are just outsiders who are paid to come to their towns and make their lives miserable. There’s also a widely held sentiment that the police spend far more time looking for petty offenses that produce fines than they do keeping these communities safe.”

Big opportunity for libertarians and liberty-leaning Republicans here. And this piece, by Radley Balko, is really great in looking at the big picture of how this makes poor communities poorer while enriching a parasite political class.