Poverty isn’t a crime

Damian Stinnie, a 24-year-old lymphoma patient, was forced into homelessness because he could not pay his traffic fines. A Ferguson, Missouri, woman ended up spending six days in jail and owing more than $1,000 because she could not pay a $151 parking ticket. A Tennessee man with liver disease failed to get treatment after he lost his driver’s license for nonpayment of traffic tickets.

“More than 7 million people nationwide may have had their driver’s licenses suspended for failure to pay court or administrative debt,” the Washington

Post found in a new analysis. There is reasonable enforcement of the law, and then there is penalizing poverty. Too many states and localities have designed systems that seem geared toward squeezing revenue from desperate people rather than ensuring public safety. In some cases, relatively small initial fines turn into massive debts and stints in jail.

The poster child for unfairness has been Ferguson and other small St. Louis suburbs, punctuated by a 2015 Justice Department report. But the Post’s analysis revealed that there are places that need to reconsider how they punish people. Hawaii, Kansas, Vermont and Virginia each has suspended the licenses of more than 9 percent of the adult population for debt or associated issues.

In recent years, Virginia has begun to reform. Availability of reasonable installment payment plans for fines used to be scattershot, but now people do not have to pay more than 10 percent of their fines in down payment. This is just one change that states can consider. They should also ensure that courts are open with flexible hours that allow people to show up without missing work. They can limit the potential for small fines to escalate into absurd sums. And they can allow those on suspended licenses more latitude, for example by permitting them to drive to job interviews.

Lawbreakers must face consequences, and police need to keep the streets safe. But ruining poor people’s lives is not the way to do either.