alt Hacker News> That's a distinction without a difference
Criminal versus civil is a distinction with massive difference.
> Most people receiving these fines happily spend a month in prison for six figures
Most civil monetary penalties are for reporting and filing violations to the FEC, HHS or FinCEN; submitting false information in a Medicare/Medicaid claim [1], grant, contract or bid; or violating consumer protection, employer, OSHA, environmental or patient care laws. The “you” is probably a corporation. And I’m not sure anyone would rationally escalate a fine for e.g. submitting a contract bid with outdated information into a criminal conviction.
[1] https://oig.hhs.gov/fraud/enforcement/types-of-civil-monetar...:
>Criminal versus civil is a distinction with massive difference.
And the sky is purple. See, we can both make baseless assertions. You can say it all day long. Doesn't make it true. At the end of the day the executive agencies are unilaterally costing people money that's on the same order as real deal criminal fines for comparable conduct. The word "civil" doesn't change that anymore than it changes the true nature of civil asset forfieture.
>Most civil monetary penalties are for....
They're for things where they generally could never hope to convince a jury the fines are reasonable for.
You list broad categories because when people dig into the nitty gritty of it they find it unconscionable. Municipalities threatening landowners hundreds of dollars per day multiplied by years for not having the proper permit to clear vegetation on their own land. OSHA fining businesses thousands because unsupervised line employees were doing dumb shit they were told not to that only endangers themselves. And then these people have to lawyer up and defend themselves for more thousands because the fines are always way higher if you don't. All at the literal whim of an enforcement official.
All of this civil enforcement stuff is basically BS end runs around the rights that people (even legal fictions of people) are supposed to have. The government, federal or otherwise, is not supposed to be able to meaningfully punish people (even corporate people) without the consent of the people (i.e. a jury). The way civil process cuts the judiciary out entirely is worse still.
Just declaring "well it's civil" because the accused's name isn't going on a naughty list and jail isn't a potential penalty doesn't change the fact pattern of serious fines being issued without the accused party having any real rights of due process beyond hiring someone who knows their shit to argue in front of the arbitrary kangaroo process owned by the same agency that issued the fine (of course you can sue if you want but the enforcement agencies avoid creating situations where that's practical).