Drivers Program Deserves Funding

A program designed to help people who have been arrested repeatedly for driving with suspended licenses has asked the city of Spokane for $53,700. It will need another $53,700 in six months.

The city should pony up.

The Community Restorative Justice Program doesn’t accept drivers with a large number of serious driving offenses, chronic drunken drivers, people with a history of violence, or career criminals.

The goal is to help low-income people whose licenses have been suspended because they couldn’t pay their fines.

This is not a minor problem. Over the past 14 months, Spokane police officers have issued more than 4,400 citations for third-degree driving with a suspended license. Each arrest costs each officer one or two hours of time, not including subsequent appearances in court.

About half of those charged are jailed, and they stay an average of five days. Estimated jail cost: $200,000 a year.

When these cases reach the courts, they account for:

Twenty-one percent of the city’s criminal traffic cases.

Thirty-three percent of public defender cases.

Eleven percent of outstanding warrants.

Drivers accepted by the program owe an average of about $2,100 in unpaid fines. Most have two to four tickets.

They can’t afford to pay the fines. Their insurance is canceled, and re-insurance becomes more expensive because of their driving record. They don’t go to court, because they can’t pay and don’t want to go to jail. Warrants are issued.

They become criminals, living on the fringe of the community, unable to drive legally, almost unemployable.

The program is designed to help them out of this spiral.

Participants have to follow the rules. No driving until license is restored. No driving offenses. Attend living skills classes. Attend regular meetings with a review board that monitors compliance. Make regular payments on fines.

If they mess up, they’re expelled from the program. No excuses, no second chances.

If they stick with the plan for four months, their driving privileges return. Any arrest warrants are quashed. Their fines are consolidated and a monthly payment plan is set up.

More than 500 people have been admitted into the program. About half of them didn’t make it through the four months. But 90 percent of those who did are succeeding.

That’s more than 200 people who aren’t in jail, who are paying their fines, and working, and rebuilding their lives.

The Restorative Justice Program relies heavily on volunteers, so it is cheap. After nine months of operation with partial funding, it has shown that if funded fully it can almost certainly pay for itself in fine collections alone.

City Manager Hank Miggins says he will ask the City Council to pay for the program with reserve funds.

The council should approve this expenditure.

The program is expanding into Spokane County, and similar programs are operating in Pend Oreille and Mason counties. It is being watched by state officials.

Lawmakers in Idaho should pay attention, too. After a third arrest for driving with a suspended license there, people are sent not to jail, but to state prison. The result, as one county prosecutor put it, is “a whole new class of felons.”