Yesterday I wrote about the evils of free punishment, which tempts lawmakers into punishing people just because they can. But free punishment is just the low endpoint of a much bigger problem: Profitable punishment, also known as fines.

There's nothing inherently evil about fining wrongdoers, but it carries the risk of turning law enforcement into a profit-making operation for the government, which really screws up priorities.

The classic example of profitable punishment is the small-town speed trap. Some small towns along major state roads figured out that if they stationed a cop on the road right at the point where the speed limit dropped to pass through town, he could ticket enough out-of-town drivers that the fines would pay most or all of his salary.

Most small-town speed traps were eliminated by the growth of the limited-access Interstate Highway System which kept traffic out of the small towns. However, during the oil crisis of the 1970's, federal oil conservation laws forced states to lower their expressway speed limits from the typical 60 or 70 miles per hour to only 55. Most drivers ignored the limit and continued to drive at normal speeds, and states quickly learned they could make a lot of money by ticketing their own citizens for speeding. Long after the oil crisis had passed, expressways continued to have 55-mph speed limits, now justified by concerns for safety.

In a more recent invention of ways to bilk money from citizens in the guise of safety, the state of Virginia has been in the news for imposing very high fines for some traffic violations. E.g. $900 for for driving 20-mph over the limit.

The Virginia legislature didn't even pretend this had anything to do with public safety: The fines are part of a bill passed to provide "statewide funding of transportation projects through current funds and additional funds" according to its summary on the General Assembly website. In other words, this is a transportation funding bill. The closest the bill comes to a legitimate justification is some language in § 46.2-206.1.A which says "The purpose of the civil remedial fees imposed in this section is to generate revenue from drivers whose proven dangerous driving behavior places significant financial burdens upon the Commonwealth."

Timothy P. Carney of The Examiner contends that the entire funding bill is the result of lobbying by real estate developers to get the state to build roads that will increase the value of real estate they want to develop.

Meanwhile, Radley Balko points out that Virginia House Delegate David Albo—who has been taking credit for the new law—is a partner in Albo & Oblon, a law firm that specializes in defending people accused of DUI and other traffic offenses. No wonder he's so excited about this law: He'll make a lot of money from people who hire his firm for their defense. This isn't the first time he's done this kind of thing, either.

Another new money-raising trick is high fines for speeding in construction zones. Where I live, these tickets cost $375 each. A cop giving out just one a day is covering his own salary. There have been allegations that the city stretches out construction projects just to increase their ticket revenues.

The prevailing modern version of the small-town speed trap, however, is automatic enforcement using computer-controlled cameras. Cities are making millions of dollars from installing red-light cameras. The supposed justification is safety-related, but there's plenty of discussion by folks in city government about how much more money they'll make with a few more cameras.

In fact, it seems that automatic red-light cameras actually hurt safety. Several studies in Ohio, Maryland, Virginia, and other places have shown that the accident rate increases at intersections that have red-light cameras, and a recent study showing a decrease in accidents in Delaware appears to use bad math.

There seem to be two reasons for this. First, drivers approaching an intersection as the light turns yellow are more likely to stop rather than continue through, which increases the number of rear-end collisions. Second, in a disgusting example of money-over-safety, some places have been shortening the duration of yellow lights at intersections, which increases the number of tickets issued but also increases the number of accidents.

The most blatant example of red-light profiteering I can think of is in nearby Tinley Park, Illinois where the village will soon give red-light camera vendor Redflex the right to install cameras in village intersections in return for a flat annual fee. The village will get a steady cash flow, and Redflex will get to keep all the money from the tickets.

(There are signs of an uprising against our camera-wielding robot masters. When radar speed cameras were first tried in the American west, they were often shot up by angry motorists. In gun-free Great Britain, they prefer to destroy the offending cameras with burning tires.)

Profitable punishment is a far worse problem than free punishment. It provides a much greater incentive for unnecessary criminal laws. But even when fines are used to punish genuine crimes, they also provide a perverse incentive to not actually reduce the amount of bad behavior. When a city is spending a million dollars a year running a batch of red-light cameras, the last thing they want is for everyone to drive safely.