When common sense rules, sanity and justice prevail
For a few days last week, reason ruled the criminal justice system. Sanity prevailed. The law of unintended consequences was overturned.
A federal judge ruled that Tennessee’s practice of revoking someone’s driver’s license for unpaid court costs and traffic fines was unconstitutional — and counterproductive.
The 2012 law was intended to help county clerks collect unpaid debts. Instead, it became a form of debtors’ prison.
Nearly 150,000 Tennesseans had their driver’s licenses revoked. Some knew, but many didn’t. Many kept driving.
County court dockets were jammed with new cases of people being prosecuted for driving with revoked licenses.
People who were less likely to be able to pay court costs were more likely to suffer “both constitutional and material injuries” that “are, or are likely to be, irreparable,” the judge said.
Meanwhile, Shelby County District Attorney General Amy Weirich said her office already had stopped prosecuting those cases in September, freeing up nearly half of the General Sessions Court docket.
The Shelby County District Attorlicenses ney’s Office was handling 20,000 to 30,000 suspended or revoked license cases a year.
Hundreds of nonviolent offenders were being kept in the Shelby County Jail for failure to appear in court, or pay court costs or bail, or for driving with suspended licenses.
The county was paying more than $100 a day to jail someone who might have $100 in unpaid court costs or $100 bail.
“These cases take up valuable time and resources in court and do nothing to move the needle on public safety,” Weirich said. “We’re trying to help get people out of the revolving door in which they are simply accumulating more and more debt for basically driving while poor.”
The court docket and jail caught another break last week. Beginning in January, people with traffic and other misdemeanor citations will have to report to court only once instead of twice.
Half of the 24,405 misdemeanor citations (which also clog the system) issued last year were for failure to appear at a court appointment — often due to a revoked driver’s license.
“It sounds simple, but it affects tens of thousands of people,” General Sessions Court Judge Louis Montesi told The Commercial Appeal.
Fear not, law abiders. Police will still give tickets to drivers who don’t have a valid license. The DA will still prosecute those who have had their revoked for drunken driving or other criminal activity.
Not everything that happened in local law and order last week made sense. The U.S. Justice Department abruptly ended its monitoring of Shelby County Juvenile Court.
The court has made a lot of progress ensuring the due process rights of children and protecting them from harm while in custody. But independent monitors say the court still fails to provide equal protection to minority children.
“We’ll continue the oversight, it’ll just transition from federal oversight to local oversight,” Shelby County Mayor Lee Harris said. “We have to make sure progress continues.” Not as simple as it sounds. Or is it? Last week’s efforts prove we can find more rational, sensible solutions to other problems that plague the criminal justice system.
The cash bail system that has become another form of debtors’ prison.
The school-to-prison pipeline that criminalizes childish misbehavior and what our grandparents once called “poor raisin’.”
The institutional and implicit bias that infects the juvenile justice system, regardless of whether the U.S. Department of Justice is watching.
“Common sense often makes good law,” said the late Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas.
And good policy.