The Ticket Machine
In 2012, the eight officer traffic unit of Port Arthur, Texas, a town of only 55,000 collected $2.1 million in fines. This revenue bonanza however, came at a significant cost to residents. From 2009 to 2011 over 1,500 people, about 2.7 percent of the town's population, many of who were poor and seventy-five peercent of who were Black, had been locked up for failure to pay their traffic fines. Judith Greene is quoted in this Buzzfeed article discussing the use of day fines as a possible solution to this problem.