California sr 87 -Traffic ticket!

mkirsch wrote:


The $37 fine doesn't even pay the officer's salary and benefits for the time he spent pulling you over, writing up the ticket, and doing the paperwork at the end of his shift.

There's all that other bureaucracy that the ticket has to go through too (office staff to process, clerk to collect the fine, computer systems to store the information, etc), plus the court system if you decide to fight it. Remember all that exists to protect your innocent-until-proven-guilty rights.

If not for the fees, Average Joe Taxpayer would be footing all of the bill for "your" bad behavior. As it is, we're still picking up some of the tab after all this "money grabbing" is said and done.

It's my understanding that the costs to run a police department and the court system isn't funded by the ticket revenue. At least, it isn't supposed to. Let's just imagine that folks started obeying the traffic laws. Revenue would dry up and police force and courts would not have enough to operate for the year. Can you even imagine the whole law enforcement syndication reducing it's staff because they weren't needed any longer? Neither can I. Like any enterprise, Law enforcement look for ways to spend their budgets and for new ways to increase their operations, not decrease them.
I'm pretty sure I've been bombarded by the government with 'threats' that police, fire and schools will be cut unless new taxes are voted in. If ticket fees were the funding source, then wouldn't it be 'double-dipping' to also tax the citizens for the same service?