This has long bothered me.

Essentially, those without money are punished more harshly than those with, which is clearly unfair.
Oh, right, they should just pull themselves up by their bootstraps, and become rich... lol.

A couple of anecdotes:

I read of a lawyer who routinely parked wherever he pleased (especially right by the courthouse,) and simply paid the parking fines. He charged so much per hour that apparently it was more cost effective to do this than to spend time looking for legal parking. I suspect this is not uncommon.

On the other end, in Southern California they seem to be making up for a lack of tax revenue by cracking down on all kinds of traffic violations. An elderly relative down there turned right at an intersection that was subtly posted "no right turn," and was fined more than a third of his monthly Social Security check. This was a real hardship for him...

The Swedish model (not sure if they actually went ahead with that) of proportional fines seems a lot more fair.

And jail time, of course, is fair enough... though the rich might say that since time is money, a month of his time is more of a draconian punishment than a month of some poor schlub's time.

Thing is, though, that since fines seem to be replacing taxes, thought should go toward making them less, well, regressive.

Or maybe go back to the old fashioned way of getting government income...