Q Should repeat litterbugs get community service?
Before lawmakers rush into adopting the idea of increasing fixed penalties for littering and even introducing community service for offenders, they should pause long and hard.
The government claims it does not want to criminalise littering; but it has already done so and there are already offenders being sent to prison for dropping cigarette butts.
I work in the court system and I regularly see people who have been arrested on warrants for non-payment of fixed penalties.
These are not well-heeled, middle-class folk for whom $1,500 is an affordable nuisance; they are the very poor, frequently elderly, sometimes disabled, for whom $1,500 is a very large sum, perhaps as much as a half of their monthly CSSA payment.
And because they could not afford to pay the penalty in the 28 days allowed, the fine is automatically doubled to $3,000, with another $300 costs slapped on top.
This $3,300 is simply beyond the means of those at the lowest end of the social spectrum. And magistrates have no power to adjust the fines.
