GateHouse Media
March 15, 2019
In 1999, Steve Smith was charged in Pennsylvania
with underage drinking. He was 14-years-old. Steve Smith is not his real name,
but his story is real and tragic.
The penalty for underage drinking in Pennsylvania
includes a driver’s license suspension. Due to Smith’s poor decision as a child
he was ineligible for a license when he turned 16. Smith never got a driver’s
license, but he drove.
He was convicted of driving under suspension in 2003
and again in 2006. Each time his suspension was extended. In 2013 he was
convicted of driving without a license. Earlier this year he was arrested again
for driving under suspension.
Now, Smith gainfully employed for more than nine
years, married and the father of four children faces six months in jail - 21
years after a youthful indiscretion.
Suspending an individual’s driver’s license for
non-driving offenses is short-sighted and counterproductive.
In Smith’s case it was for conduct as a 14-year-old.
For some it may be the result of using marijuana, failing to pay parking
tickets or being too poor to pay non-traffic fines or court costs.
In Alabama, a federal lawsuit was recently filed
challenging the practice of suspending the driver’s licenses of people who
cannot pay traffic tickets as a violation of the 14th Amendment by “punishing
persons simply because they are poor.”
According to The Associated Press, the federal
lawsuit seeks to prohibit the suspension of driver’s licenses for nonpayment of
fines. The suit also asks the court to require state agencies to reinstate any
driver’s license previously suspended for nonpayment.
A U.S. Department of Justice investigation of the
police in Ferguson, Missouri - known for the violent unrest after a police
officer involved killing of an unarmed black teen - “found that in Ferguson, a
small city with a population of just 21,000, more than 16,000 people had
outstanding arrest warrants issued by the court as of December 2014,” with many
of those warrants having “nothing to do with criminal behavior.”
A recent forum at the John Jay College in New York
entitled “Cash Register Justice” explored the exploitation of the poor to
finance criminal justice costs through onerous fines and court costs for
otherwise minor offenses.
Research data shared at the forum, suggested that in
May 2018, an estimated 7 million Americans had their driver’s licenses
suspended because of unpaid fines and fees. According to The Crime Report, 85
percent of Americans drive themselves to work.
Forty-three states have laws that suspend driver’s
licenses, revoke licenses, or deny renewals for unpaid fines and fees.
Defenders of these practices claim that this is the only coercive tool at their
disposal, but The Crime Report points to statistics that say it does not work.
Last year Mississippi stopped suspending people’s
driver’s licenses purely because they had not paid court fines and fees.
Licenses in Mississippi continue to be suspended for people who do not respond
to citations or if a judge holds someone in contempt for failing to pay fines.
A recent California study found “a litany of
practices and policies that turn a citation offense into a poverty sentence,”
with add-on fees for minor offenses sometimes doubling or quadrupling the
original fines. According to NPR, the report says that once a person’s license
is suspended, they become even more unable to pay their debts, entering “long
cycles of poverty that are difficult, if not impossible to overcome.”
In some states, the court will let an offender spend
time in jail in exchange for paying a fine or court costs - a debtor’s prison
for those cloaked in poverty and unable to pay.
Matthew T. Mangino is of counsel with Luxenberg,
Garbett, Kelly & George P.C. His book The Executioner’s Toll, 2010 was
released by McFarland Publishing. You can reach him at www.mattmangino.com and follow him
on Twitter @MatthewTMangino.
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1 comment:
Maybe if Steve Smith had finished his first suspension without his apparent disregard for the law, his life would be a lot easier now Instead he chose to continually break the law and is now paying the price. Stupid is as stupid does.
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