Does Milwaukee Run a Debtor’s Prison?
The study offers an appalling factoid: Under state law, you can have your license suspended for six months for reckless driving, nine months for first offense drunken driving, 12 months for hit and run with a person injured in the accident — and 24 months for failure to pay a ticket for a burnt-out tail light.
"Up to two-thirds of African-American men of working age don’t have a drivers license in some of Milwaukee’s poorest neighborhoods, Pawasarat has found. Retired Milwaukee Municipal Court Judge Jim Gramling was so appalled by the problem of poor people losing their drivers licenses that he has worked with lawyers and court officials to help start the solution-oriented Center for Driver’s License Recovery and Employability. “What we see constantly here at the center are drivers who have accumulated a series of tickets that are directly related to their lack of income,” he told National Public Radio.
A study in 2013 from the American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators raised concerns that police and state and local motor vehicle officials find too much of their time and budget is tied up going after people with suspensions for minor lawbreaking that has nothing to do with safe driving.
“They want to focus on the people who pose a risk to the general population that’s driving on the roadway. And those are usually the people who are suspended for … things like hit-and-run crashes, DUIs, unsafe speed, reckless driving — those actions that we as a society consider severe and dangerous on the roadway,” said the study’s author Robert Eger, in the NPR story."
http://urbanmilwaukee.com/2015/04/30/murphys-law-does-milwaukee-run-a-debtors-prison/
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