This is correct. Story time!
A friend of mine was arrested due to a warrant from an unpaid traffic violation ticket for driving without proof of insurance. It wasn’t paid because the ticket was dismissed after they later showed they did have insurance, but this was not recorded in the proper system.
Five years later, they were arrested after being pulled over for a burned out brake light. They spent most of a day in jail. Luckily, they kept proof of the dismissal, otherwise they’d have been held accountable for the government’s mistake. No compensation was provided for their time in jail and missed work. Murica!
cerebralhawks@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 hour ago
In a vacuum, that is a fact; however, for most of the things people get warrants out on them for, they know what they did. If they don’t know it was wrong/a crime, I would say that’s more on them than on the system.
You can get warrants for unpaid moving violations. For stuff like that, I think notification by mail would be more efficient. Like “you haven’t paid this so now there is a warrant out for your arrest,” just to inform the person. Yes, going against the reason for not notifying, they may still commit several more moving violations (like speeding) before being caught, but tons of people do this, sometimes right in front of cops, and a lot of cops look the other way. Now if someone has done something violent, left a victim, no, you wouldn’t want to notify them because of the chance that they’d either go do more harm to the victim (and now the police/the system is liable) or they will do more crime that will result in more victims, and again, liability.