Overturned on the basis that SCOTUS has ruled that fines have to be proportional to the offense. If a billionaire got a million dollar speeding ticket, they would challenge it on the basis that the fine, 1 million dollars, would not be proportional to the offense, speeding.
If your goal is to make life easier on poor people, taking the 200 dollar speeding ticket down to 50 dollars doesn't do it. Sure, it saves them 150 dollars on the fine, but the problem is their insurance rate is what really costs them, not the fine. I grew up in poverty. When I got a moving violation, my concern was never the cost of the ticket. The court clerk will let you pay that out over a few months if you need to. The worry was always how much your insurance would go up.
Moreover, the fact is, rich people commit less crime than poor people. You can crank the fines up all you want on rich people, and its not going to do anything to curb crime because statistically, they don't commit many. Finally, for infractions related to substance abuse, most courts have diversion programs. You can get out of much of the fines or jail time if you seek treatment.
As a side note, as someone that grew up in poverty, I will tell you that unfortunately, there are just more pieces of shit out there among the poor than there are in the middle class. The guy that breaks your car window to look in your glove box for a gun to steal, probably isn't upper middle class. The guy that cuts your catalytic converter off and costs you 2 grand to replace it, probably isn't a member of the local rotary club. The meth addict that steals you blind, probably poor. Most people that are poor are just doing what they can to get by and improve their lives. However, there is more of an overlap between pieces of shit and poor people than there are in any other group - and other poor people, unfortunately are usually their victims. When you pull back on policing in poor communities, the people hurt are poor people.
