Towns are now criminalizing unpaid traffic tickets?
Traffic tickets in general? Yes, many localities issue warrants for people who receive speeding tickets or other moving violations and then fail to show up for their court dates. But generally speaking, you can clear those things up by simply showing up at the clerk's office sometime before the po-po finds you and making your payment. There's nothing new about failure to show up for court being a crime.
I was completely irresponsible and just ignored the bill, that makes issuing an arrest warrant okay?
The court cannot tell whether you forgot or if you are just expressing your contempt for the judicial system. Yeah, I think issuing a warrant is probably justified.
That said, I think an arrest for unpaid parking tickets
is pretty special. I've hadn't heard of that before. I just remembered that I have an unpaid ticket at Duke university.
Last year I read a book about the criminalization of poverty in America,
Yes, that's a pretty serious issue. In some cases people who are currently self sufficient can be driven into complete poverty by the court system. You shouldn't be able to go to jail for parking tickets. I don't see any difference between that and debtor's prison.
Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.
Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also in prison. Thoreau: Civil Disobedience (1846)
History will have to record that the greatest tragedy of this period of social transition was not the strident clamor of the bad people, but the appalling silence of the good people. Martin Luther King
If there are no stupid questions, then what kind of questions do stupid people ask? Do they get smart just in time to ask questions? Scott Adams