Welcome to Double Punishment
Governor Patrick has come up a way to pay for more police officers:
Governor Deval Patrick said yesterday that he had come up with a way to pay for more police officers in Massachusetts: charge convicted criminals a fee.
Unveiling his most detailed account yet of his plans for next year's state budget, Patrick said he would propose a "safety fee," which every person convicted of a crime would have to pay.
It's not clear whether he's proposing that the courts assess the fee as part of laying out a punishment. Presuming he isn't, this sounds a lot like a double punishment scheme - a judge hands out a fine for a misdemeanor, and then the governor adds on his own fee. This reminds me of the scheme South Carolina uses to fund the "uninsurable motorist" insurance pool - by charging a fee based on the number of tickets a driver has had in the last three years (it doesn't matter that you've already paid your fine to the jurisdiction in which you were ticketed, or that your insurance rates have gone up to reflect the violation). And the fee is collected - you guessed it - through your insurance company; you can't get insurance without paying the fee.
