system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
Political Philosophy: Equality of Punishment?

Equality of justice is supposed to be a fundamental aspect of democratic societies. But it seems there are many difficulties in actually implementing it.

Let's say there's a law that punishes a crime with imprisonment of 3 months. Now for two different persons, this punishment can have different costs. One of them may have a family to take care of, an examination to appear in that would affect his career significantly or other promises/contracts to keep. The other person may not have similar obligations. Therefore, the punishment, although equal in duration, will have completely different costs to these two convicts who committed an identical crime.

This becomes a very real issue when we consider fines. Let's say there's a 100$ fine for speeding. Now to someone rich, 100$ is bare change while to someone who only had 100$ to get some urgent medicine for himself, the effective costs are huge. Clearly, the law has affected them unequally.

EDIT: On the other hand, if the fines are made proportional to wealth, the system will have incentives to target the rich.

How can we actually achieve "equality of justice"?
gpt
many countries calculate fines on (serious) traffic violations as percentage of income, or a combination of fixed amount+percentage of income. the process is usually automated, so incentives to target "the rich" are not realy a problem. the reasoning behind all this is not necessarily to achieve equality in justice, but rather that not doing so would not have a deterrent effect on wealthy people.