Holland wishes it wasn’t like this. He also wishes he could have kept his job as a plumber, where he was making $16 an hour rather than the $11 an hour he makes at Denny’s.
Matt Holland works nights at a Denny’s in Florida, and his wife has to pick him up at the end of his shift at 1 a.m.
"When you take away a person’s license, you kind of take away their ability to provide for their family in a certain type of way," Holland told ABC News. One such staggering number is 11 million: that’s the number of people across the U.S. today that advocates estimate have a suspension in place on their driver’s licenses as a result of not paying fines or fees or missing a hearing date, Weiss said, though she noted that number is likely"a gross undercount" because of what she says are the shoddy reporting practices in certain states.
"For many people, they get a traffic ticket, they're on a limited budget, their choice is pay that traffic ticket or pay their rent, or their utilities or buy groceries or medicine, and so they chose the basic needs of their family first," Weiss said. "We’ve also inducted you into the criminal justice system for a traffic ticket that should never have gotten you involved in the criminal system to begin with, and that is why this is an example of criminalization of poverty."
In addition to the traffic infractions as a teen, court records report that Kinch was charged with two cases of unlicensed driving last year in New York. In one, he was indicted on felony driving with a suspended license, but pleaded to a misdemeanor aggravated unlicensed driving charge, records show. He was sentenced to 20 days in jail and 2 years' probation. In the other case, he pleaded guilty to a count of aggravated unlicensed driving and received a $500 fine, according to the records.
Nusrat Choudhury, the deputy director of the ACLU’s Racial Justice Program, explained that while some may falsely assume that people are"thumbing their nose" at the system by not paying fines and fees, the issue is truly one of prioritization of funds. The department had come under scrutiny in the wake of the shooting death of Michael Brown, and among the scathing report’s findings was the conclusion that the city budgeted"for sizeable increases in municipal fines and fees each year, exhorts police and court staff to deliver those revenue increases, and closely monitors whether those increases are achieved.
Stanley, who works full time as an attorney, said that in some small communities, he had worked with clients who were targeted by local law enforcement because they knew that the individuals were driving on suspended licenses to get to work. "These are mothers and fathers, not criminals, who just because they couldn’t pay a fine, have a right taken from them and now have to live in the shadows and that’s just not fair, it’s not America," he said.
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