Canton Repository...
State is wise to study laws on license suspension  
September  11, 2011 

The issue: Matching punishment to crime

Our view: Out of carrots, legislators choose sticks that may not work 

A task force has been studying a question that’s worth studying: 

Is the state suspending too many Ohioans’ driver’s licenses for issues unrelated to highway safety? 

It surely sounds as if that is the case. One of every eight Ohio drivers has a suspended license. And not all of these one million or so drivers are menaces on the highway. The task force has been studying the ramifications, for society and for individual drivers, of taking away driving privileges for offenses unrelated to driving. 

Driving is a privilege, not a right. Commit a serious enough infraction behind the wheel, or enough less serious offenses to brand yourself as dangerously careless, and you deserve to lose your license. 

But over the years, state legislators, faced with intractable problems such as non-payment of child support, have found themselves short of carrots to encourage compliance with the law. So they’ve turned to loss of a driver’s license as a stick to punish non-compliance. In Ohio, you also can lose your driver’s license for taking a weapon onto school property, dropping out of school or skipping school too often. 

This tactic can backfire, though. Parents who owe child support, for example, may not be able to get to work if they can’t drive, making payment even less likely. 

This week, the task force, made up of representatives of courts, 

the Ohio Highway Patrol, other state agencies and the insurance industry, made several recommendations. They include giving judges more discretion to allow parents who are behind on child support to drive to work and to job interviews. 

The value of some of the other recommendations, such as allowing judges to restore driving privileges to motorists who haven’t shown proof of vehicle insurance, is debatable. But it’s good to have the debate. The state is smart to review all of the license-suspension laws in which the punishment may not fit the crime. 

Read it at the Canton Repository