Until about a decade ago Montreal judges would routinely order people to be locked up for unpaid parking tickets and other municipal fines.
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The practice has largely been eliminated due to public relations and humanitarian reasons, as local judges lost their appetite for locking people up for minor victimless offences.
While jail technically remains a possibility, since 2004 judges usually offer community service work as an alternative for those who don't pay their tickets.
Wiping out the jail alternative has also removed much of the red ink involved in handing out tickets, as incarceration is costly for taxpayers.
Perhaps it's no coincidence that Montreal police now hand out for more parking and jaywalking tickets than other places, as there is now no possible negative consequence in the form of costly and embarrassing jailed ticket martyrs.
Yet there is still no shortage of heartbreak among those ticketed, even if it doesn't include jail.
Find a seat anywhere in the city hall annex on Notre Dame and you'll immediately be among a roomful of people dealing with the heartbreak and stress of dealing with fines.
Last time down there, a lovely bright-eyed young Haitian-Montrealer started weeping in front of me, telling me that as a hardworking single mother, the $2,000 in tickets the city hit her with has made it impossible to properly care for her young child.
(I too have a crazy ongoing story about unjust graffiti fines that has been written about elsewhere which I will address on this site later this winter).
Jailing non-violent ticketees led to some fantastically over-the-top cases of injustice a while ago.
At least one person who decided to take jail time rather than pay a fine reported that it was quite a pleasant experience.
In 1981 a 60-year-old man named Jim was sentenced to eight days in jail after refusing to pay $80 in tickets handed to him for parking in front of a Baptist church in Outremont.
Those sentenced to less than 90 days were allowed to serve their sentences on weekends, which allowed them to keep working during the week.
So offenders would simply go into Bordeaux Prison on Friday evening, get fed pineapple ham or pork chops. Prison guards were friendly and the sleep in the solo room was perfectly comfortable.
Breakfast consisted of juice, cereal, porridge, eggs, toast, jam and coffee. Reading, chit chat, ping pong or other activities killed the rest of the weekend.
"I wouldn't have missed it for the world," Jim reported. "You put a guy in there and he's happy."
Between 230-325 men were serving such weekend sentences for minor offences at Bordeaux in 1981, while 24 women were doing the same on the other side of the yard at Tanguay.
I said there must be a mistake as I never knew about any such fine. The officer left me by the roadside for 45 minutes to study my situation and then ordered me to hand him $300 or go to jail.
I was able to get that cash at a machine and obtained a signed receipt from the officer. I later had he entire fine overturned by a municipal court judge and my money was returned.
At the time I was barely scraping by, a hardworking young father of two young children. Had I not been able to come up with $300 at that moment for a ticket I knew nothing about, I would have been able to report on how the food was in jail.
While jail technically remains a possibility, since 2004 judges usually offer community service work as an alternative for those who don't pay their tickets.
Wiping out the jail alternative has also removed much of the red ink involved in handing out tickets, as incarceration is costly for taxpayers.
Perhaps it's no coincidence that Montreal police now hand out for more parking and jaywalking tickets than other places, as there is now no possible negative consequence in the form of costly and embarrassing jailed ticket martyrs.
Yet there is still no shortage of heartbreak among those ticketed, even if it doesn't include jail.
Find a seat anywhere in the city hall annex on Notre Dame and you'll immediately be among a roomful of people dealing with the heartbreak and stress of dealing with fines.
Last time down there, a lovely bright-eyed young Haitian-Montrealer started weeping in front of me, telling me that as a hardworking single mother, the $2,000 in tickets the city hit her with has made it impossible to properly care for her young child.
(I too have a crazy ongoing story about unjust graffiti fines that has been written about elsewhere which I will address on this site later this winter).
Jailing non-violent ticketees led to some fantastically over-the-top cases of injustice a while ago.
- Dreadlocked 40-year-old translator David Smith, a familiar sight in weekend pickup softball games at Fletcher's Field, was sentenced to federal penitentiary due to unpaid tickets. Smith was the author of his own misfortune by running up 128 parking fines worth $12,500. When he failed to come through on his community service duties, Smith was sentenced to 30 months in a federal prison.
- In 1989 Elizabeth Smits, 47, was slapped with a $10 ticket for parking in a handicapped spot at Mirabel Airport. She refused to pay because her husband suffered from bad arthritis and said the ticketer simply failed to see her sticker. The ticket rose to $175 and she was also jailed,
- Manon Chouinard, 29, an eight-month pregnant mother of two was chained to a hospital bed for six days at Ste. Justine's hospital after failing to pay parking tickets.
At least one person who decided to take jail time rather than pay a fine reported that it was quite a pleasant experience.
In 1981 a 60-year-old man named Jim was sentenced to eight days in jail after refusing to pay $80 in tickets handed to him for parking in front of a Baptist church in Outremont.
Those sentenced to less than 90 days were allowed to serve their sentences on weekends, which allowed them to keep working during the week.
So offenders would simply go into Bordeaux Prison on Friday evening, get fed pineapple ham or pork chops. Prison guards were friendly and the sleep in the solo room was perfectly comfortable.
Breakfast consisted of juice, cereal, porridge, eggs, toast, jam and coffee. Reading, chit chat, ping pong or other activities killed the rest of the weekend.
"I wouldn't have missed it for the world," Jim reported. "You put a guy in there and he's happy."
Between 230-325 men were serving such weekend sentences for minor offences at Bordeaux in 1981, while 24 women were doing the same on the other side of the yard at Tanguay.
The devil can be beaten
Police were once very quick to play the jail card. In 1999 I was pulled over by police and threatened with jail because I supposedly had failed to pay a bicycle-related ticket written up a decade earlier.I said there must be a mistake as I never knew about any such fine. The officer left me by the roadside for 45 minutes to study my situation and then ordered me to hand him $300 or go to jail.
I was able to get that cash at a machine and obtained a signed receipt from the officer. I later had he entire fine overturned by a municipal court judge and my money was returned.
At the time I was barely scraping by, a hardworking young father of two young children. Had I not been able to come up with $300 at that moment for a ticket I knew nothing about, I would have been able to report on how the food was in jail.