That's true of some fines in some places, but to be clear, it's not really true of parking fines in Chicago. The graph in the article indicates there's about $1 million dollars in tickets issued each year. That's around $ .30 per resident and less than one percent of the billions in revenue the city takes in each year (https://www.cityofchicago.org/content/dam/city/depts/obm/sup..., see page 23 in particular) I did notice that fines in general amount to $300 million a year, so other fines might well be inflated.

I believe the y-axis on that graph (assuming you refer to the last graph) is the number of parking tickets, not the dollar amount of fines. So more like $50 to $100 million in parking fines per year.

You're absolutely right. The graph could have been clearer, but I should have double-checked my assumptions and that $.30 per resident figure should have been a red flag. I apologize for that basic error.

Looking into this more, it sounds like, while there probably is a perverse incentive because more tickets equals a significant increase in revenue, the biggest problem is the punitive fines for minor non-traffic offenses that tend to compound for poorer residents: https://www.motherjones.com/crime-justice/2018/02/how-does-c.... Note the headline is a little misleading, they seem to mean "non-moving violations".