Dennis Welch: Chronic underfunding

Nicholas Kristof’s June 19 column “In America, it’s a crime to be poor” exposed a dark side of our justice system. But he neglected to emphasize why it imposes so many fines on poor people embroiled in the system.

Stacking fine upon fine helps support the system because it’s underfunded. Why? Because there isn’t enough tax revenue to support an increasingly profit-oriented and expensive system of incarceration, probation, fine collection, etc.

Why is this so? Follow the money or the lack of it. Wages for the middle class haven’t even kept pace with inflation since the early 1980s. Large federal and state tax cuts for the wealthy compound the problem, resulting in a middle class that resents taxation because its burden is disproportionately shifted (by crafty politicians) on them in the form of increased fees, regressive sales taxes, etc.

Consequently, state and local services, such as policing and our justice system, go continually underfunded, and the poor remain powerless.

This story was originally published June 25, 2016 at 6:00 PM with the headline "Dennis Welch: Chronic underfunding."