Being young means you're less likely to be totally responsible yet. Being poor means you're less likely to have parents that are 100% engaged in your library visits.
Small fines seem like a great way to instill a sense of responsibility (while also acting as insurance style payments), especially if your parents already aren't engaged and ensuring you're responsible to duties.
As this the Good Will Hunting quote suggests, in many libraries these fees were small, $1.25 in late fees for a Harvard Education...
Sure, they seem like that. But the study Chicago conducted showed that fines increased patron anxiety and were antithetical to the intended goals of library leadership in engaging their patrons.
So it actually may have actually been detrimental.
Poor people are sometimes forgetful as well. I forgot to return library books many times as an ADHD kid but the small fine was irrelevant to my blue-collar, "you need to go to university someday" parents.
Please have some empathy for poor children and children with unengaged parents and stop supporting punishing them for their failings by removing access to one of the things that might get them out of their position.
What is your point? Of course we all understand that being poor doesn't (directly) mean you can't return books. I could write a whole essay about how being poor could indirectly make it harder to return books (less free time from working, less access to easy transportation, etc) but that's not really a point worth making, and I don't think it would change your mind on...whatever it is you're trying to bring up.
What exactly is your point though? Just curious here. That the library directors made a mistake? That OP's point about library card suspension being correlated to income doesn't mean it's causation? Where were you trying to push the conversation here?
My point is that I don't understand why the GP brought up the poor, which are kind of a wild card ("won't someone think of the poor???"), when they are perfectly capable of returning books in time.
Oh, this is an easy one! I hope GP doesn't mind me handling this one for him.
GP was bringing some additional clarity to the content of the article and the discussion about it. See the Chicago public library had conducted a study and found that by eliminating late fees, they'd increase traffic and usage of the library system. See they found that poor people and children were less likely to engage the library system once they'd begun accruing fines. The city felt this was a negative, and to address it they changed their policy.
Again, of course they're capable of returning things on time. But the city had found that 1-the fines weren't needed to keep the libraries functioning. 2- the fines had a greater impact on the poor than other patrons, which feels bad.
The poor and their usage behaviors were part of the decision making process, and knowing this may inform the discussion. It's extremely relevant.
Being rich enables you to return books as late as you want because the fine means little to you, and certainly not whether you can eat or pay the rent.
People aren't perfect, they make mistakes. The difference is that a well off person can afford to correct that mistake by paying the fine, while a poor person is given an incentive to not do so because they can't afford it.