Over 11 million people in the US have suspended driver’s licenses due to unpaid fines.
Driver’s license suspension is increasingly employed as a punitive measure for non-driving offenses such as failure to appear or failure to comply with court orders, including orders to pay fines and fees. This practice can trap individuals in a cycle of poverty, joblessness, criminalization, and incarceration and exacerbate racial and economic inequality. The concept of Auto-Jubilee is a proposal to address the societal issues caused by debt-based license suspension laws in North Carolina by emphasizing the importance of addressing the root causes of debt-based license suspension rather than just treating the symptoms. This article also calls for massive automatic driver’s license restoration for individuals whose licenses have been suspended due to debt in North Carolina. The author asserts that such legal reforms can potentially change economic and social arrangements for the betterment of society.
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Recommendations:
- Cancel all traffic debt.
- Restore suspended driver’s licenses.
- Expunge convictions for debt-based traffic violations.
- Repeal N.C. Gen. Stat. § 20-24.1—requires that a driver’s license be suspended for failure to comply and/or failure to appear.