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Better court practices, not impoundment, have reduced DWLS

Wednesday, February 7, 2001

ROBERT C. BORUCHOWITZ AND FRED BONNER
GUEST COLUMNISTS

Promoters of the city's car impoundment program, which seizes the vehicles of people charged with driving with a suspended license (DWLS), have been touring the town in recent weeks touting the virtues of impoundment. One of the results was the P-I's recent editorial "City impound law a success."

The editorial overlooked a series of other factors that have contributed to reductions in jail bookings and in citations for DWLS.

Those reductions are good news. It is a mistake, however, to attribute those welcome developments to car impoundment. Instead, credit should go to Seattle Municipal Court for its major redesign of traffic fine collection practices, starting at roughly the same time as the impoundment program began. In addition, community program relicensing efforts have helped.

Beginning in late 1998, the court began allowing many drivers to set up time payment agreements on their old traffic tickets, usually agreeing to release the license suspension as long as the driver continued to make payments.

That arrangement removed two of the biggest obstacles that low-income people face as they attempt to get and keep living-wage jobs -- the lack of reliable transportation to get to work and the lack of a valid license, which is a requirement in many trades.

As logical as that time payment arrangement sounds, it represented a sea change in the practice of local courts. Until that time, it was rare for courts to recall old traffic fines from collections and to set up a payment agreement, let alone to release a license suspension up front once an installment was received. Courts' traditional inflexibility in adjudicating traffic fines had condemned tens of thousands of drivers in Seattle alone to indefinite license suspension status.

The Municipal Court immediately experienced a large jump in revenues collected once time payments were offered. There was a nearly $2 million jump in revenues in the first full year of the court's new approach to traffic fines.

Encouraged by that trend, the court has expanded drivers' options for taking care of old traffic fines. In cases of severe financial distress, the court now will consider reducing some fines and/or eliminating collection fees. For those who are too poor to make significant payments, even on an installment basis, the court now considers converting fines to community service. The city and county have funded several community-based organizations that assist drivers in negotiating similar arrangements with other courts.

All of these measures, taken together, have resulted in the relicensing of many drivers, mostly within the city of Seattle.

Correlation is not causation. While the city's impoundment program began at about the same time as these court innovations, it is not responsible for the improvements. Taking a car away, and requiring that the owner pay hundreds of dollars in storage costs to a private tow company to get it back, does nothing to make it more feasible for a poor driver to be relicensed.

It makes poor people poorer and ignores the underlying reason why most were suspended in the first place: not unwillingness to be responsible, but inability to pay huge fines in full before getting a license.

The P-I editorial glossed over the disproportionate impact of impoundment on the poor and minorities. Approximately 40 percent of drivers whose cars are impounded are African American, in a city with about an 11 percent African American population. When a criminal justice policy so overwhelmingly affects people of color, policy makers must review it and seek alternatives.

King County has chosen not to punish poor people further by impounding cars. The King County prosecutor and the King County District Court, working with public defenders and with the support of the county executive, developed a diversion program in lieu of traditional prosecution for DWLS cases. In addition, the county is working to expand opportunities for relicensing, largely modeled on Seattle Municipal Court's program. The county effort is not yet fully implemented; it requires coordinating semi-autonomous district courts throughout the county, which is a logistical challenge that Seattle Municipal Court did not face, and it has not received the funding or staffing that the Municipal Court has.

When the county's program is adequately funded and fully established, it will demonstrate that we do not need to take poor people's cars away to reduce driving while license suspended prosecutions and associated jail costs.

There is an adequate "stick": the King County prosecutor can reinstitute criminal prosecution of the DWLS case if the driver does not make progress in paying the traffic fines or satisfying them through community service. This is a rational, profitable and compassionate program that should be viewed as a model.

Robert C. Boruchowitz is director of the Defender Association. Fred Bonner is a Seattle Municipal Court judge.

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