In Re Gi Nam
*835 MEMORANDUM
This bankruptcy appeal raises a close question our Court of Appeals has not yet addressed, namely, whether a bail bond surety’s debt to the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania arising from the defendant’s failure to appear is dischargeable in the surety’s Chapter 7 bankruptcy. This question, which implicates uncommonly interesting policy issues, has a personal pun *836 gency here, as the surety is the father of the defendant-son.
I. Background
A. Facts 1
Gi Nam’s son, David Nam, was charged on September 22, 1997 with various offenses, including murder, robbery, and burglary following the shooting death of Anthony Schroeder during a robbery on March 5, 1997. Bail was set at $1,000,000, and by a Certification of Bail and Discharge dated January 12, 1998, Gi Nam agreed to serve as a surety for the bail, 2 see Compl. Ex. A. The operative portion of the Certification of Bail and Discharge reads: “WE THE UNDERSIGNED, defendant and surety, our successors, heirs and assigns, are jointly and severally bound to pay the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania in the sum of ONE MILLION dollars ($1,000,000). WE are bound by the CONDITIONS of this bond as shown on both sides of this form.”
The Certification contained the signatures of David Nam and Gi Nam, and includes the surety’s acknowledgment that he is “legally responsible for the full amount of the bail.” The Certification also includes a number of conditions of the bond, including that the defendant appear before the courts as directed, submit to all court orders, commit no criminal act, and comply with any conditions of release. The Certification requires that “[t]he DEFENDANT and the SURETY must give written [notice] to the issuing authority ... of any change in his address within forty-eight hours of the date of his address change.” The Certification contains a confession of judgment provision, and further states, “If defendant performs the conditions as set forth herein, then this bond is to be void, otherwise the same shall remain in full force and this bond in the full sum thereof shall be forfeited.”
On March 12, 1998, David Nam failed to appear for a pre-trial status listing in the criminal case, and thereafter, on April 6, 1998, a Judgment was entered in the Court of Common Pleas of Philadelphia County, Criminal Section, against Gi Nam in the amount of $1,000,018.50 3 as a result of David Nam’s failure to appear. 4 The notice of entry of judgment, see Compl. Ex. B, stated that the judgment was entered against Gi Nam and that it was entered in the case of “Commonwealth of Pennsylvania vs David H. Nam”. The notice stated, “You may reduce your financial responsibility by producing the defendant forthwith and filing a petition with the Clerk of Quarter Sessions to vacate, in total or in part, the judgement [sic] against you,” *837 and was signed by “Alex Bonavitacola, President Judge, Court of Common Pleas of Philadelphia.” David Nam evidently remains a fugitive.
B. Procedural History
The Debtor, Gi Yeong Nam, petitioned for bankruptcy under Chapter 7 of the Bankruptcy Code on May 19, 1999. On August 27, 1999, the City of Philadelphia filed its Complaint in Adversary No. 99-815, alleging that Gi Nam had listed the bail bond judgment as an “unsecured non-priority claim” in the schedules he had filed in the bankruptcy case, and that this debt was in fact not dischargeable pursuant to
C. The Bankruptcy Court’s Opinion
Before moving forward with our discussion, we pause to review the findings the court below reached,
see In re Gi Yeong Nam,
The Bankruptcy Court first addressed the scope of the exceptions to discharge-ability provided by
The Bankruptcy Court then examined the City’s authority for the proposition that a surety’s bail bond debts are nondis-chargeable pursuant to
Having so found, the Bankruptcy Court then examined Pennsylvania law and concluded that the obligation of a bail bond surety is civil, and not penal, in nature, and that therefore Gi Nam’s debt resulting from his suretyship on the bail bond was dischargeable,
see In re Gi Yeong Nam,
II.Issues on Appeal
As the City notes, 7 the issues on appeal are as follows:
1. Whether the lower court erred as a matter of law in finding that the criminal bail surety judgment entered against Mr. Nam is not a non-dischargeable find, penalty or forfeiture pursuant to11 U.S.C. § 523(a)(7) including, but not limited to:
a. Whether the lower court erred as a matter of law in looking beyond11 U.S.C. § 523(a)(7) ’s express statutory language;
b. Whether the lower court’s finding that criminal bail surety judgments are incapable of being precluded from discharge as “fines, penalties or forfeitures” under11 U.S.C. § 523(a)(7) is contrary to — and undermining of — -the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania’s and Philadelphia County’s bail surety process; and
c. Whether, in light of the factual distinction between private bail bondsmen and “bail surety municipalities”, the lower court erred as a matter of law in finding that the criminal bail surety judgment entered against Mr. Nam is not a fine, penalty or forfeiture payable under11 U.S.C. § 523(a)(7) .
2. Whether the lower court erred in finding that — despite the Complaint’s allegations, attachments, and all reasonable inferences that can be drawn therefrom, and even when viewed in a light most favorable to the City of Philadelphia — the City of Philadelphia was unable to prove any set of facts supporting its claim that the criminal bail surety judgment entered against Mr. Nam is a non-dischargeable “fine, penalty or forfeiture” under11 U.S.C. § 523(a)(7) and entitling the City of Philadelphia to the relief of non dischargeability. 8
III. Appellate Jurisdiction and the Standard of Review
A. Appellate Jurisdiction
We have jurisdiction over this appeal pursuant to
B. Standard of Review
Generally, in reviewing a bankruptcy court’s decisions, we review its legal determinations
de novo,
its factual findings for clear error, and its exercise of discretion for abuse thereof,
see In re Trans World Airlines, Inc.,
IV. Analysis 9
Our analysis here comes down to three issues: (1) the scope of the exception to
*839
discharge delineated by
A.
Construction of
11 U.S.C. § 523 states, in pertinent part: (a) A discharge under section 727 ... of this title does not discharge an individual debtor from any debt -
(7) to the extent such debt is for a[l] fine, penalty, or forfeiture [2] payable to and for the benefit of a governmental unit, and [3] is not compensation for actual pecuniary loss
“To determine whether [a debt] is dischargeable under
Thus, we need only concern ourselves with the scope of the statute’s “fine, penalty, or forfeiture” language. The City argues that since Gi Nam’s bail bond debt is in fact a “forfeiture” of the bond amount resulting from his son’s failure to appear, the debt falls within the plain language of the statute. The Debtor, conversely, argues that the statute only creates an exception for penal debts, into which category Nam’s obligation does not fall.
We first note that both the Supreme Court and the only Court of Appeals to address the question of the dischargeability under
*840
Similarly, the Fourth Circuit, considering an issue identical to that we face here
13
, found that “[t]he nondischargeable ‘fine, penalty, or forfeiture’ under
Our own analysis of the language of the
[a] comprehensive term which means a divestiture of specific property without compensation; it imposes a loss by the taking away of some preexisting valid right without compensation. A deprivation or destruction of a right in consequence of the nonperformance of some obligation or condition. Loss of some right or property as a penalty for some illegal act. Loss of property or money because of breach of a legal obligation ....
Black’s Law Dictionary 650 (6th ed.1990) (citations omitted). As is clear from this definition, “forfeiture” is an extremely broad term, embracing both deprivations of rights resulting from a party’s wrongdoing, as in “a penalty for some illegal act”, as well as those deprivations not associated with wrongdoing as such.
We therefore must interpret the meaning of “forfeiture” in this context by reference to the terms that accompany it.
15
“Under the principle of
ejusdem generis,
when a general term follows a specific one, the general term should be understood as a reference to subjects akin to the one with specific enumeration,”
Norfolk & Western Rwy. Co. v. American Train Dispatchers Ass’n,
Applying these canons of construction, we observe that the generality of forfeiture's dictionary definition stands in contrast to the other terms used in the statute, since “penalties” and, especially, “fines,” both refer exclusively to a punishment levied for an actor’s wrongdoing.
A penalty is “[an] elastic term with many different shades of meaning; it involves idea of punishment, corporeal or pecuniary, or civil or criminal, although its meaning is generally confined to pecuniary punishment.” Black’s Law Dictionary 1133 (6th ed.1990). 16 While this definition *842 by its own terms is also quite broad, it illustrates that the central concept surrounding a penalty is that of punishment. Similarly, the applicable definition from the Oxford English Dictionary states that a penalty is “[a] punishment imposed for breach of law, rule, or contract; a loss, disability, or disadvantage of some kind, either ordained by law to be inflicted for some offence or agreed upon to be undergone in case of violation of a contract,” XI Oxford English Dictionary 461 def. 2a (2d ed.1989). Again, the theme of punishment for wrongdoing pervades the definition.
With respect to
fine, Black’s
defines this word only as a verb, to mean “[t]o impose a pecuniary punishment or mulct. To sentence a person convicted of an offense to pay a penalty in money.”
Black’s Law Dictionary
632 (6th ed.1990). The
Oxford English Dictionary
defines
17
fine
as “[a] certain sum of money imposed as the penalty for an offence” V
Oxford English Dictionary
926 def. 7c. Here, the use of “fine” in
We therefore find that
We observe that this interpretation finds support both under the policy behind bankruptcy law in general and under judicial application of
*843
We are fortified in our conclusion when we examine how courts have applied
We conclude, therefore, that
B. Character of Gi Nam’s Debt
Under our interpretation of
As this is an appeal from a dismissal pursuant to
We first observe that these allegations in the Complaint do not amount to a claim that Gi Nam himself engaged in wrongdoing outside of the requirements of the bond. There is no suggestion, for example, that Gi Nam caused his son’s failure to appear and thereby, by his own acts, triggered the judgment. Rather, the allegation is that as a result of his son’s failure to appear — which is to say an act (if of omission) by the son — this debt accrued by the operation of the bail bond. We must therefore look to the nature of the obligations the bond per se created, which the law of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania defines.
These provisions do not show that Gi Nam’s bail bond surety debt is a penal sanction resulting from his own wrongdoing under
With respect to this second duty, we find it significant that the surety’s obligation to produce the defendant is nowhere explicitly stated in the bond itself;
22
instead, as noted above, the bond itself lists, almost exclusively, duties of the defendant. Moreover, absent some affirmative role by the surety in the defendant’s failure to
*846
appear,
23
a surety’s “violation” of the requirement that he ensure the defendant’s presence cannot reasonably be said to constitute “wrongdoing” for the purposes of placing the resultant bond debt within
The reasoning is similar for the surety’s obligation to disclose the defendant’s change of address. Unless the surety’s failure to disclose such a change was associated with an active effort to hide the defendant’s location, such an action is not “wrongdoing” sufficient to turn the bail forfeiture into a “penal sanction”. Also, we note here that giving notice of a change of address presupposes that the defendant both had a new address and that the surety was aware of it, neither of which were in any way alleged in the Complaint.
We therefore conclude that Gi Nam’s liability to the Commonwealth arising from the bail bond was not a penal sanction arising from his own wrongdoing. The wrongdoing here was only the son’s, who failed to meet his obligation to appear. 24
C.
Application of
We have above concluded that
Having reached that decision, we now as a final matter address the argument, which the City forcefully forwards, that such an interpretation of the scope of
We will begin with an outline of the concern that the City identifies. The City contends that the purpose of bail is to ensure the defendant’s presence at trial, and that where the surety on the bond is a family member the defendant’s incentive to appear is linked to the financial harm that will accrue to the surety if the bond is forfeited. Similarly, when a family member is a surety, the financial harm resulting from the forfeiture of the bond is the surety’s incentive not to assist the defendant in fleeing the jurisdiction.
Were we to allow a family member surety’s bail bond debt to be discharged in bankruptcy, the City argues, we would effectively eliminate these financial incentives on the defendant and the surety and will irreparably harm the bail system. If the defendant and the surety know that the liability for the bond will be erased if the surety enters bankruptcy, the City contends that there is much less reason for the defendant to appear, since his family member surety will be able to deflect the financial harm of forfeiture, and on the same logic there will be much less reason for the family member surety to refrain from assisting the defendant’s flight. Thus, so the City’s argument goes, an interpretation of
*848 As an initial matter, we acknowledge, as did Judge Sigmund in her opinion, that these concerns have much merit, and we cannot fault the logic in the City’s incentive analysis. We cannot, however, let these policy concerns determine the outcome here.
First, and most significantly, we do not think that the interpretive concerns expressed in
Kelly
go to the issue in this case. It is certainly true that
Kelly
repeatedly mentions the importance of not interfering with state criminal prosecutions, but in assessing the significance of these pronouncements we must look to the context in which they were made. In
Kelly
the Court examined whether a payment of “restitution” made as a condition of probation by a woman convicted of the wrongful receipt of welfare benefits fell under the exception to dischargeability of
More than this, however, the language that
Kelly
used suggests that the Supreme Court was particularly concerned with interfering with a state’s punishment of a convict,
see Kelly,
The policy concerns expressed in
Kelly
on their face go to federal interference with sentences states impose upon convicts, and there is nothing to suggest that the Supreme Court was mandating that construction of
Second, even if the policy concerns in
Kelly
do encompass the harms caused by the discharge of bail bond surety debts, it is unclear why the presence of these concerns would compel a result contrary to that which we have reached here. For one thing, although
Kelly
directs us to interpret
Third, the policy implication that the City identifies is at best difficult to quantify. Certainly, the City’s incentive analysis works at the margin: if a private surety was strongly considering helping the defendant flee, the possibility that the debt could be discharged in bankruptcy might tilt the decisional balance and impel that surety to assist the defendant to skip bail. However, even given this marginal effect, the cumulative effect of the availability of discharge remains an imponderable, in part because there remain countervailing incentives to the surety and the defendant. For one thing, irrespective of our decision here, sureties lose the money they pay up front on the bond when the defendant fails to appear. In this case, Gi Nam has lost the $100,000 (or ten percent of the total bond value) that he paid at the execution of the bond, hardly a paltry sum. Moreover, entering bankruptcy is itself a far from costless event, with grave implications for the debtor’s credit. While these costs do not eradicate the concerns created by discharging bail bond surety debts, their existence shows that the balancing of competing interests and policies here presents a difficult calculus for any court to perform with any hope of precision.
In the end, we agree with Judge Sigmund and find that to the extent that these policy concerns should come to a different balance, it is for Congress, and not this Court, to address them by amending the statute.
III. Conclusion
We hold that
Notes
. As we discuss below, the City of Philadelphia here appeals the Bankruptcy Court's December 8, 1999 Order granting Debtor’s motion to dismiss the City’s Complaint in Bankruptcy No. 99-16565DWS and Adversary No. 99-815, pursuant to
. Although this is not clear from the Complaint, it would appear that the Debtor-father paid ten percent of the bail amount, or $100,-000, in cash, see Compl. Ex. A (Certification of Bail and Discharge with space labeled "Amount of Bail Paid” filled out as "100,-000”).
. The $1,000,000 bail plus $18.50 in costs.
. From the terms of the Certification of Bail and Discharge, it would appear that the judgment was in favor of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. As noted above, however, it is the City of Philadelphia that commenced this adversary action. The Bankruptcy Court noted this concern without addressing it, and in its papers the City maintains that it is the real party in interest pursuant to 42 Pa. Con. Stat. Ann. § 3572. In any event, particularly as the court below made no rulings with respect to this question, we see no reason to address it here, and shall assume without deciding that the City is indeed the proper party in interest here.
. We express our appreciation to both parties for their exceptionally well-organized and thorough briefs, which have greatly aided our consideration of this difficult issue.
. The exception, which we will discuss further below, is
United States v. Zamora,
. See Designation of Items to Be Included In Appellate Record and Statement of Issues to Be Presented On Appeal, R. at Tab 4.
. Although these are the issues the City sets forth in its Statement of Issues on Appeal, the City’s Appellate brief itself is not organized around these discrete questions, although it does ultimately address each of them. Instead, the Appellant’s brief states that the issue presented is, "Did the Bankruptcy Court erroneously discharge the debtor’s bail bond forfeiture obligation, in excess of $1 million, in granting the debtor’s motion to dismiss the City of Philadelphia's complaint, where the Bankruptcy Code explicitly exempts forfeitures from discharge, and where discharging the forfeiture impermissibly interferes with the criminal prosecution of the debtor's son?” Appellant’s Br. at 1. We find that given the nature of the Bankruptcy Court’s decision, the exact statement of the issues on appeal is of little moment to the manner in which we address the parties' arguments here.
.As we here review a decision made under
. We suppose that there might be some question as to whether the $18.50 in costs levied on Nam is in compensation for a pecuniary loss, but undoubtedly the $1,000,000 value of the bond itself is not.
. Ultimately, the burden of showing that a particular debt is nondischargeable under
.In
Kelly,
the Supreme Court addressed the question of whether restitution paid as a condition of probation to the state probation department by a person convicted of larceny was a debt dischargeable in Chapter 7 bankruptcy. The Court ultimately found that such a restitution payment was penal in nature, and that it therefore fell under the
. As noted above,
Collins
is the only decision of a Court of Appeals addressing the application of
The City cites to several other lower court cases that addressed the status of bail bond surety debts in support of its argument that such debts are nondischargeable under
. The City makes no argument, nor could it, that Nam's debt is either a "penalty” or a "fine”, and we therefore focus on "forfeiture".
. It is at this point in the analysis that we part from the reasoning of the court in
United States v. Zamora,
the case upon which the City most directly relies. In
Zamora,
the court faced an identical situation as we do here, namely, the question of whether the bail bond surety liabilities of a debtor are nondis-chargeable under
.This is the first definition for
penalty
given in
Black’s Law Dictionary.
An additional definition or example
Black’s
gives is "[t]he sum of money which the obligor of a bond under
*842
takes to pay in the event of his omitting to perform or carry out the terms imposed upon him by the conditions of the bond.”
Black's Law Dictionary
1133. Again, this definition reflects that a penalty is imposed upon a party for his wrongdoing, in this case, a failure to meet the conditions of a bond. While this definition might seem at first glance to apply to our facts here, it does not, since, as we will discuss more below, it was not Gi Nam, but instead his son, who failed to act in accordance with the bond. We note that
Black’s
also refers to a penalty with reference to contract penalties, but an examination of
. Again, we provide the definition pertinent to the context.
. We further note that the "exceptions to discharge are to be strictly construed in favor of the debtor,”
In re Fegeley,
. As discussed above, we find this interpretation to be the only one that comports with the language used in the statute. We note that the Debtor’s own arguments in support of this interpretation rely on pre-Code bankruptcy practice and on the provision’s legislative history, but we do not find either of these sources useful or convincing for the purposes of our analysis.
We begin with the pre-Code bankruptcy practice. The Debtor notes that courts interpreting the present Bankruptcy Code have referred to the practices under the Act of 1898 that preceded it, and in construing provisions of the Code that were codifications of earlier judge-made law, as § 523(a)(7) evidently was, courts interpret the codification to match the prior judge-made law absent evidence of specific intent that it be interpreted otherwise,
see Kelly,
Valid though this may be as an interpretive tool, it does not help us here where prior to the present Code courts treated bail bond surety obligations both as dischargeable and as nondischargeable,
compare United States
v.
Hawkins, 20
F.2d 539 (S.D.Cal.1927) (holding that debts owed to the United States for liabilities of the debtor as a surety on bail bonds are "of a class as to which a discharge in bankruptcy is a release”)
with In re Caponigri,
Debtor also argues that the legislative history of § 523(a)(7) and related provisions shows that "fine, penalty, or forfeiture” was meant only to address penal sanctions. The portion of the legislative history of the Bankruptcy Reform Act of 1978 that refers to § 523(a)(7) reads as follows:
Paragraph (7) makes nondischargeable certain liabilities for penalties including tax penalties if the underlying tax with respect to which the penalty was imposed is also nondischargeable (sec.523(a)(7)). These latter liabilities cover those which, but are penal in nature, [sic ] as distinct from so-called "pecuniary loss” penalties which, in the case of taxes, involve basically the collection of a tax under the label of a "penalty.”
S. Rep. No. 95-989 at 79, reprinted in 1978 U.S.C.C.A.N. 5787, 5865.
The Debtor argues that this text shows that Congress intended § 523(a)(7) to go only to "penalties” — that is, debts involving "punishment” — and that therefore a bail bond surety debt is not within the provision. We do not *844 find this convincing. Even taking the text at face value, we are left with the fact that the statute does not list only "penalties” but also "fines” and "forfeitures” and therefore the Senate Report does not foreclose an interpretation which finds the statute applicable to the bail bond debt on the basis of the provision’s inclusion of "forfeiture”.
The Debtor also seeks to make use of the legislative history of § 726(a)(4) of the Bankruptcy Code, which deals with the priorities for distribution of the estate's assets, and which also employs the "fine, penalty, or forfeiture” diction. Debtor notes that the legislative history for this section refers to "punitive penalties”, S.Rep. No. 95-989 at 97, reprinted in 1978 U.S.C.C.A.N. 5787, 5883. On the proposition that the same words used in different parts of an act should be given the same meaning, Debtor again argues that the "fine, penalty, or forfeiture” in § 523(a)(7) must therefore refer only to a "punitive penalty” because § 426(a)(4)’s legislative history gave that meaning to the same string of terms used in that section.
We cannot accept this use of § 426(a)(4)’s legislative history. First, as the City notes, § 726(a)(4) applies to any "fine, penalty, or forfeiture” but does not specify that they be payable to the government, and therefore it is unclear that this section refers to the same subject matter addressed in § 523(a)(7). Even if it did, the mere use of the words "punitive penalty” in the legislative history does not foreclose any application of this provision to a bail bond surety debt where the Congress used words other than "penalty” to characterize the debts involved. We consequently do not find the legislative history the Debtor cites to be convincing evidence of the proper interpretation of § 523(a)(7).
. As we noted above, the mere use of cognates of the word forfeiture does not of course place the debt within § 523(a)(7).
. We note here that the Debtor cites to several Pennsylvania cases in an effort to show that Pennsylvania bail bond surety debts are civil, and not penal, in nature. We do not find that this case law would necessarily support this position. In
Ruckinger v. Weicht,
The Debtor also cites to several Pennsylvania cases that held a bail agreement to be a contract that is properly interpreted using rules of construction applicable to contracts generally,
see, e.g., In re Marshall’s Estate,
To the extent that the Debtor cites to these cases in support of his argument that Gi Nam’s debt is not the same as a penalty assessed against his son in the underlying criminal case, we agree that this is a fundamental difference. Even so, the question remains whether Gi Nam's bail bond surety debt arose as a penal sanction for his own wrongdoing associated with his son’s failure to appear, independent of an adjudication of the charges against his son per se.
. At least, we are unable to locate any such statement in the copy of the bond that the City has provided with its pleadings, though owing evidently to repeated Taxings and pho-tocopyings of the exhibit, several of the sentences in our copy of the bond are completely illegible.
. As noted above, the City's Complaint contains no suggestion that Gi Nam had a role in his son’s failure to appear, and therefore we do not face here the difficult question of whether such a role would constitute wrongdoing sufficient to place the forfeited bail within § 523(a)(7). We note from a later opinion of the Bankruptcy Court that Gi Nam and his wife ultimately invoked their Fifth Amendment rights in response to interrogatories from the Trustee that sought to examine the circumstances surrounding the bond and the judgment,
see In re Gi Yeong Nam,
. The City makes much of the fact that the judgment entered against Gi Nam was issued by the Criminal Division of the Court of Common Pleas in the criminal action against David Nam. Although the judgment may be thus styled a "criminal judgment” since it emanated from the criminal division, we find that such a label by itself cannot determine our course here, as we must look to substance and not to form.
.Kelly
noted that this concern was reflected in the pre-Code judicial practices by which courts found that judgments of state criminal courts were not discharged in bankruptcy despite that the strict application of the letter of the Act of 1898 would have discharged them,
see Kelly,
. We note that the City's position on statutory interpretation is somewhat inconsistent here. As it began its interpretation of § 523(a)(7),
Kelly
noted that "the starting point in every case involving construction of a statute is the language itself.... But the text is only the starting point.... In expounding a statute, we must not be guided by a single sentence or member of a sentence, but look to the provisions of the whole law, and to its object and policy,”
Kelly,
. As the above discussion suggests, the City notes that these policy arguments do not apply equally to debtors who are professional bail bondsmen. Because bail bondsmen have no relationship with the defendants, they have no incentive whatever to aid the defendant's flight, and every incentive to capture a fugitive defendant in order to recoup the value of the bond. Moreover, a bail bondsman who faced regulatory examination has a disincentive to declare bankruptcy and may in any event be less prone to doing so because a bondsman can account for the probability of forfeiture in the premium he charges.
Having noted this difference in incentives, the City then notes that most of the cases discussed above holding that the bail bond debts are dischargeable, notably including the Fourth Circuit’s decision in In re Collins, involved professional bail bondsmen rather than family member sureties. Thus, the City contends, those cases are in fact inapposite to our situation here because the policy concerns arising from allowing a bail bondsman to discharge his bond debts are so much less salient than those at issue here with a family member surety. The City argues that in our circumstances the policy concerns loom much *848 larger and compel a different result. In the immediate context, it is appropriate to note that bail bondsmen are prohibited from bonding defendants in Philadelphia County.
We again agree with the City’s incentive analysis. It would seem apparent that the policy concerns implicated by the discharge in bankruptcy of bail bond debts are less severe when the debtor is a bail bondsman than when the debtor is a family member. However, this difference does not change our decision here.
For one thing, as discussed below in text, we do not find the policy concerns surrounding the family member sureties to be compelling. David Nam has, after all, cost his father at least the $100,000 premium as well as his future credit. Moreover, to the extent that we relied upon In re Collins in our interpretation of § 523(a)(7), we cannot see how its holding regarding the scope of the statute was really affected by the fact that the debtor was a bail bondsman, although we recognize that the Collins court discussed that fact at length in addressing the policy concerns associated with its ruling. With respect to this, we note that it is rare indeed to interpret the same statute to mean two different things when applied to two different individuals, particularly when there is no hint in the language of the statute that Congress contemplated such a differentiation. As we will remark at the conclusion, to the extent that such differentiation would be a good thing, it is for Congress, and not us, to make it.
. We note here again that the result here might be different if there were allegations that Gi Nam had aided his son's flight, but that is not this case.
. We recognize that
Kelly
did broadly state that the interpretation of § 523(a)(7) must proceed "in light of the interests of the States in unfettered administration of their criminal justice systems,”
Kelly,
. We also observe that the concern for the state criminal justice systems is not the only policy concern at play here. We have mentioned above that the central goal of the bankruptcy system is to permit "honest but unfortunate” debtors an opportunity for a fresh start, and our decision must reflect this goal as well.