The police have a lock em up attitude and use that to intimidate people into plea bargaining so they don’t have to do their jobs

What is the alternative?  Never being considered for one second for the job so basically there is nothing to loose by checking ‘no convictions’

When you leave high school or college and actually have to apply for jobs – you will learn that that applications that ask about any convictions will ask about misdemeanors too, and even ‘major’ traffic infractions. 

Also – even jobs that ask for a resume will require you to fill out an application if they want to hire you.

He was not convicted, so I suppose a lot of law and order people would say “See! The system works!”, but he’s never been the same. Our family is still wounded with him. Even if you believe that bad people should have no rights or comforts, think about how many people sitting at that jail have been convicted of truly petty offenses like fishing out of season or haven’t been convicted at all, and then think about what it does to them and their families.

By saying this guy was punished for being poor is down right ridiculous.
He was fined for breaking the law not being poor.

I think that everyone agrees that the fine was for breaking the law.  The “punishment for being poor” was being jailed when he couldn’t pay the $250 fine up front. 

Also, everyone is
jumping to conclusions about the judge and the not so wise fisherman.
Instead of jumping on his side saying they should have given this guy a
line of credit (which is the obvious, decent thing to do in this, our
welfare society), why not ask “Was this the guy’s first offense?” “Had
he been warned and didn’t heed the warnings?”

This is really silly.  Your little quip about the “welfare society” suggests you’re one of those anti-statist libertarian types, but at the same time you’re cooing about how important it is for the state to interfere with people trying to feed themselves the way human beings have been feeding themselves for hundreds of thousands of years.  If you’re opposed to “welfare society” then why do you think the solution is to pay to jail him for 3 days instead of trying to recoup the money by say…letting the guy delay payment until he actually has the money?  Instead the state spends money and law enforcement man hours that would have been better spent on violent offenders and this guy loses three days of his life he could have spent looking for a job.  Not only that, but now that he’s gone to jail it’s even tougher for him to get a job.

I bet you even think of yourself as a steely-eyed pragmatist despite the fact that you can’t see the judge ordered the worst outcome for the man, the wife, the child, the taxpayers, and society in general.

I’m sorry but I come from
an area that takes pride in their hunting and fishing and any capture or
killing of an animal outside of the established law is poaching, plain
and simple.

OK, and a fine was levied for fishing out of season — fair.  And the guy was jailed for not being able to pay it — not fair.  This is a relatively plain and simple distinction to make.

You root for the Sheriff of Nottingham when you watch Robin Hood movies, don’t you?

I sure wish this was the only way that poverty became a crime.  

Auto insurance and registration seem like particularly common hardships on the poor to me.  If people are on food stamps (or could be), cut all government fees and fines in half, or whatever.  Otherwise, all punitive fines are regressive.

His wife and child didn’t get fed because women are helpless? For all we know, the guy was living off his wife’s breadwinnings and was just fishing like a bum instead of out looking for work.

We really have to start making up stories in order to justify why the court not splitting a $215 fine nto two payments and ordering him to jail for three days was a model of jurisprudence?

For all I care, he could be the heir to the Scary Off-Brand Snack Cake Fortune, and his wife couldn’t attend the hearing because she was having her twice-weekly unicorn fur skin treatment. Any judge with half a functioning heart and brain would answer this request with “Approved, clerk, please note the record. Next case, please, and let’s get someone who actually did something seriously wrong for the next one, ‘K.”

‘Fishing like a bum’ yeah because only bums fish. And while we are at it, what is your assumption regarding what she was doing? Something befitting the wife of a bum no doubt.

In all seriousness, people in hard positions do what they can. And I for one am thankful that the one person we do know anything about tried to do something constructive (not exactly legal but it’s better than what others would have done), would we have preferred that he attempt to rob a 7-11 instead? I think not.

No thanks. I prefer a justice system that looks at each case, not as a cookie cutter policy meant to make life better for the rich and penalize the poor. 
Somehow I’m having a hard time believing a fish caught out of season, by a guy that offered a reasonable payment, being deserving of an expensive stay at the Barred Window Hotel. 
But apparently, that math is not the first thing that comes to the stage 4 mind. 

It’s either do this (pay) or do this (jail time), no leniency.

That false dichotomy is exactly what I’m disputing. There were legal, effective, less wasteful, and more just punishments available no matter how loudly you protest otherwise.

Here’s a few things to mull over. Do you think Mr. DeWitt (the star/poor man of this conversation) would have gone this route if he a) had money for a fishing license b) could have found decent work or c) just come up with the money to pay his fine? We have established that this man was poor, out of work and wanted to support his wife and child (which are very admirable pursuits). He probably (though I don’t know for sure) tried everything he could before to make ends meet and following his ticketing he probably tried even harder, perhaps asking friends and family for support or taking odd jobs. Hell, he did have a hundred dollars he offered in good faith to try and make good on his debt to society. And his reward for trying so hard was to be kicked in the teeth (metaphorically), sent to jail (at taxpayer expense) and still be back where he started off or worse; with no job, two other people to help support, a record, a target on his back (I’m sure that this judge and all the other law enforcement types will now know his name and keep it in their minds should he ever cross paths with one again), and in addition to that he can’t fish.

But yeah, you’re surely right that ‘he got what he deserved’. And obviously he needs to get off his lazy ass and find a job, like yesterday. And in the mean time he can hope to find some fresh juicy roadkill to tide his family over, on the proviso that it is not out of season or there is some damn fool law about collecting dead animals.

If you can show me a freshwater fish that looks like the above that is simply and officially (rather than colloquially or generically) called “Sunfish” I’ll accept that you are correct. What is pictured above is a sunfish but it is a certain type of sunfish (an argument I’m not entering). You say it’s not a bluegill, that’s fine. But it is a “-something- Sunfish” (there is a saltwater “Sunfish”, which is why I say there’s no freshwater fish called only a “sunfish”). Earlier you said “It’s a sunfish, not a bluegill” then your last post contradicts this by saying that “all bluegill are sunfish”. So I’m wondering where you were going with that line.I’ve been fishing all my life as well, that makes neither one of us an unqualified expert on the matter.  Just as there are bass in the generic sense, in North America it is either a Smallmouth or a Largemouth bass. But now I’ve been sucked into a pointless internet argument and it’s my own fault for taking the bait. I should do a better job of avoiding the trolling lanes.

So when you wrote “that’s a sunfish, or a brim, closely related to (but not) a blue gill” you said said the equivalent of “that’s a steak, closely related to (but not) a New York Strip”.