Are you suggesting government, city, county, state, feds, etc., make no money and or do not recover the money it took to arrest someone, through imposed fined, pays fees, asset seizures?
Could I see the link to this?
What I am saying is when you calculate all of the time involved in a drunk driving arrest ( district attorney time, officers time, court time, logging of evidence, judge’s time, court reporter, jury expenses, expert witnesses (usually a toxicologist and sometimes a physician etc), the fine from a DUI does not pay for all of these expenses and by the time any fine money makes it to a local agency (again speaking from my experience) there is not much left.
Now if a defendant does not go to trial, some of the expenses are mitigated but all of the work, short of the trial is done, and the expenses are incurred. The fine for first time DUI in CA can be as high as $3500 but can be as low as $1400, plus 48 hours in jail and then DUI school and possibly probation and as you can see that vast majority of the fine is consumed by the expenses. Also, judges are known to give the defendant a “payment” plan which might be as long as two years.
For other than traffic, say an rape or assault, the cost of investigation alone might run into the thousands of dollars. This does not include all of the court costs or forensics. And, since most defendants are indigent, from whom do your recover expenses?
We did receive some assest seizure money, on occasion but not anything you could bank on and by the time it got to us, it was not very much. Now, I cannot answer for the Feds or State just my experience.