But when judges have even the remotest incentive to fine people who might not really deserve it, and when treatment providers are in a position to profit if they prescribe their own services to people who are under court order to purchase them, our carefully balanced scales of justice are seriously out of whack.

The judges who preside over the growing number of city justice courts in Utah are, on paper, insulated from any pressure that might be brought by city managers or other local officials who appoint them, and who may or may not reappoint them in four years.

But it is human nature to seek to justify one's job. And because the justification for creating justice courts explicitly includes being a revenue source for the wider city government, judicial impartiality is seriously compromised.

Judges in the county version of such courts, as well as state-run district courts, impose fines, too. But those judges need not suffer the continued favor of the bean counters for their continued employment - once appointed they face periodic retention by the voters. And, especially on the state level, fines imposed are too tiny a fraction of total revenues to concern any budget-frazzled governor one way or the other.

The problem grows much worse in the Taylorsville and Holladay justice courts, where a firm called Justice Supervision Services has the franchise to evaluate substance abuse defendants in those courts, even when the charge is nothing more serious than a juvenile caught for the first time with a can of beer, and decide whether they would benefit from a course of education and testing that JSS just happens to sell, at the defendant's cost.

Substance abuse treatment is key to any effective and humane system of justice. But this is not the way to fund it.

Perhaps we should funnel fines collected by city justice courts, beyond the bare costs of operating those courts, into an audited statewide fund that serves not the cities, but the cause of justice.

That justice could take the form of victims' reparations or substance abuse evaluators who stand to profit nothing from what services they may or may not recommend.