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>And the courts typically take that into account. It’s not unusual for someone convicted of a crime to be allowed to use a car for work, and work only as a condition of the sentence.

When I was in college (back before the dawn of time, when dinosaurs ruled the earth -- also known as the late 1980s), one of my fellow students got his second (or third?) DUI (this is also in Ohio, BTW) and had his license suspended -- except to drive to and from work and to drive to and from the local jail where he spent weekends for several months, paying off his debt to society.

Which was geared toward making things difficult for my fellow student (weekends in jail, only driving to/from work, etc.) as recompense for the DUIs, while at the same time not destroying his life. Which seems to be the better idea, IMHO.

But what do I know, I haven't lived in Pennsyltucky in 30+ years?



> paying off his debt to society.

Paying off one's debt to someone implies that said someone receives something valuable. What value does the society receive from a person spending every weekend in jail?

It's just a punishment, there to make them suffer, plain and simple. It has nothing to do with any "debts to society". I wish we'd stop dressing our punitive justice system up in fancy wording like these, or "correctional facilities", so that we can pretend it's something that it's not.




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