A Chicago ticket awaits the owner of a car parked outside the Leighton Criminal Courthouse. Out of the more than $6.4 billion in delinquent payments the city is owed, more than $2.3 billion is for old parking, speed and red-light-camera tickets, Sun-Times reporters Mitchell Armentrout and Tim Novak found. (Ashlee Rezin/Sun-Times)
Municipalities struggling to collect money from scofflaws is an age-old problem.
More than a half-century ago in 1971, a court official in Chicago told the New York Times that 25% of parking tickets issued by the city each year were unpaid or uncollectible, despite a relatively new computer system meant to help.
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