Fee to Drive: How Poverty, Punishment, and Policy Shape the Lives of Suspended Drivers

Abstract

Punishment is a defining feature of many legal systems. While commonly justified as a means towards reducing crime, punishment also serves as a vehicle through which racial and social inequality is reproduced. Prisons and jails, a highly visible manifestation of punishment, are oft implicated in stifled mobility among the poor, racially minoritized, and less formally educated. A true accounting of the relationship between punishment and inequality expands our thinking beyond prisons and jails to consider less obvious ways citizens become ensnared in the criminal legal system. One such way is through the system of monetary sanctions. Since the 1980s, the imposition of monetary sanctions, or financial punishments, has experienced unparalleled growth. Each year, tens of millions of citizens are assessed fines, fees, and other costs for a wide range of contact with the criminal legal system, the bulk of which are concentrated among minor acts, like traffic offenses. Though touted as non-punitive, monetary sanctions facilitate indebtedness to the state that is highly consequential for those with limited financial means. Recent scholarship on fines and fees draws attention to the devasting economic and social consequences of these punishments. These effects are disproportionately concentrated among Black individuals and those with low incomes. I argue debt-based driver’s license suspensions are an important, yet understudied, mechanism for understanding the relationship between punishment and inequality This dissertation builds on previous scholarship by examining how the common occurrence of unpaid traffic debt and subsequent driver’s license suspensions shape the day-to-day experiences of suspended drivers. Through interviews with 39 suspended drivers, I identify factors, directly and indirectly, related to suspended driving privileges that stifle economic mobility and introduce stressors into respondents’ lives. Further, I identify inadequacies in programs designed to resolve debt-based driver’s license suspensions and how failure to resolve them results in a cycle of perpetual punishment until the debts are satisfied. I conclude that debt-based driver’s license suspensions are misguided policy and offer a series of recommendations to alleviate the burden of this punitive practice.