Being poor sucks. There is no two ways about it.I hope you're right, though what you describe is bad enough. The summary of that film describes a pretty awful narrative and one that doesn't look as though it will end any time soon.
I remember my mom doing 30 days for fees tacked onto a parking ticket when I was a kid. Single mom on welfare isn't going to be able to pay hardly anything, let alone the fees on fees schedule our civic justice system uses for enforcement.
So, she did her 30 days, lost her job at the call center she hated. The local tax base paid to house her for the 30 days. Things were a bit more awkward and scattered for a few months. Evicted, again.
How did society benefit? My mom served as an example to scare those who could pay. And the mill wheel of civic justice grinds along.
Now, I'm not complaining. I'm explaining. The system isn't set up to be cruel. The system is set up to enforce the will of the people as represented by elected officials and their flunkies. The more flunkies (bureaucrats) the more rules, the more difficult compliance gets, the more we need examples.
The goal is to herd people thru an increasingly difficult maze. marking the dead ends with visible marks of failure is just the easiest way to direct the herd.
It sucks to be poor, as you are less able to recover from a mistake. But that isn't factored in when you are just another human who took a wrong turn in the maze. The bureaucrat in charge of that intersection knows that the more spectacular your failure us, the less he has to work to push the masses the other way.
It sucks to be poor in modern America. But these are not American problems. Every society in all of history has had to deal with this problem. When you look at historical solutions. Things here and now are F'ing great.