Metro Police’s Traffic Bureau gives citations to motorists using their cellphones near the intersection of Flamingo Road and Maryland Parkway in Las Vegas on Friday, Jan. 6, 2012.
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Two years after a similar bill came and went, Nevada legislators are back with a proposal to decriminalize minor traffic infractions.
It was a good idea then and now, and lawmakers should support it this time around in some form.
A bill filed last week by Assemblywoman Rochelle Nguyen would assess civil penalties for minor traffic violations, which currently are classified as misdemeanors that include jail time as a possible punishment. Nguyen’s bill, which has an impressive 30 co-sponsors, would cap fines at $500 and abolish the practice of issuing arrest warrants for those who can’t pay their fines.
As is, Nevada’s laws can and do result in cases of grossly out-of-proportion punishment for traffic tickets.
According to the Fines and Fees Justice Center, a national advocacy group with staff in Nevada, the average person arrested on a traffic-related warrant in Clark County spends three days in jail. That alone is too severe a punishment for something as minor as speeding by a few miles per hour or driving with a burned-out tail light — keep in mind, these are traffic infractions in which no one is hurt.
But the consequences of that jail time can be devastating.
“Three days in jail often costs a person their job, their housing and even their children, making it far more difficult to earn the money to pay their court debt or to care for themselves or their families,” read a release from the group.
Indeed, traffic laws carrying overly harsh penalties are a form of institutionalized racism and economic inequality, as they disproportionately affect communities of color and lower-income Americans. These are not opinions, but facts supported by abundant research.
Last year, Stanford University researchers examined nearly 100 million traffic stops from 2011 to 2017 in jurisdictions across the country — the most extensive study of its type. They found conclusive evidence that Black motorists were racially profiled and that police stopped and searched Black and Latino drivers on the basis of less evidence than was used to pull over white drivers.
As for the unfair impact on lower-income Americans, that’s a cruel but simple matter of math. More affluent violators can simply pay their fine and move on, while those struggling financially can face a terrible choice of paying their fine at the expense of buying household necessities, or not paying the fine and going to jail. Traffic fines can literally extend cycles of poverty for families.
Meanwhile, locking up traffic violators in what amounts to debtors’ prisons comes at a cost to taxpayers. Housing a violation for three days in jail costs Clark County taxpayers $400, according to the Fines and Fees Justice Center.
And for what?
Well, we all know one ugly reason: Traffic citations provide a flow of revenue to court and municipal budgets. That’s largely the reason the 2019 version of the bill was defeated: Municipal courts blew back on it.
But on that point, it’s well worth noting that Carson City has already adopted the reform and has actually seen an 8% increase in its fine collections, according to supporters of the bill. Why the uptick in collections? Carson City stopped imposing a warrant fee, which made fines impossible for some people to pay.
Even so, this year will likely bring similar turbulence from courts, but lawmakers should resolve to rise above it and deliver a workable bill. The criticism in 2019 was that the bill gave the courts too little time to implement the reforms it called for. Fine, work that out. It’s also possible that some of the infractions proposed to be converted to civil violations need to be culled out and left as misdemeanors. That’s perfectly fine to explore.
But lawmakers should craft a version of the bill that is true to its intent. Nevada is among only 13 states that continue to punish traffic violations as misdemeanors and, as shown by Carson City, we don’t even do it across the board.
This brings up an important point about Nguyen’s bill: Decriminalizing these offenses isn’t a get-out-of-jail-free card for violators. The courts have ways to pursue payment without the threat of jail time. For instance, they can use a private debt collection agency, or convert any overdue amounts into a civil judgment enforceable in the same way as any civil ruling.
Plus, violators still will face increased penalties for late payment or nonpayment. They simply won’t face jail time.
It’s time for Nevada to move forward on this. Ruining lives over minor traffic infractions isn’t justice, it’s a cruel form of social injustice.
