Columbus Dispatch...
Review warranted
Pulling driver’s licenses sometimes causes more problems than it fixes 
September 15, 2011 

A legal penalty that a lot of people ignore is a legal penalty that isn’t working. 

Such appears to be the case with a number of Ohio laws that impose a harsh penalty — loss of driver’s license — for a variety of offenses, including some that have nothing to do with driving. 

Good for state Sen. Peggy Lehner, R-Kettering, for convening a working group to explore whether this legal hammer is being applied indiscriminately. 

The group is suggesting some ways a law change could give judges discretion to soften the penalty, especially in cases where forbidding someone to drive is counterproductive. 

For someone in trouble for failing to pay child support, for example, taking away his driver’s license, thereby making it difficult for him to work, isn’t likely to get payments flowing any more regularly. 

The idea behind laws establishing these penalties, no doubt, was that the ability to drive is so important to most Americans that threatening to take it away would be a powerful deterrent to breaking the underlying laws. But that’s part of the problem; inability to drive is such a handicap that thousands of Ohioans would rather break the law than go without driving. 

And people who violate those laws often have lives in disarray already; stripping them of their license makes it less likely they’ll manage to pull themselves out of their problems. Without a valid license, even if they refrain from driving, they   can’t pass background checks to get jobs, much less get to those jobs. 

Lehner’s group is offering some suggestions for quick fixes, such as allowing judges or child-support-enforcement agencies to grant partial driving privileges for work purposes to parents who are behind in their child support. Another suggestion is to allow judges to impose shorter license suspensions in cases where people don’t have proof of insurance. Current law calls for a two-year suspension, which cripples the employability of those who obey it. 

The quick fixes have merit, but legislators also should consider a deeper look at how license suspensions are used in Ohio law. 

Drunk-driving offenders and reckless drivers should lose their licenses, and the state should back it up with strict enforcement, technology that prevents driving and, when all else fails, jail. 

But other suspension laws merit rethinking. 

About 116,000 thousand license suspensions currently in effect stem from drug offenses that did not involve driving. The federal government requires such suspensions, but allows states to opt out of imposing them if the governor and legislators certify that they oppose the requirement. 

Ohioans want drug offenders, insurance scofflaws and others to face consequences for their actions that endanger or impose hardships on others. When current laws were passed, yanking driver’s licenses no doubt seemed like a powerful motivator. 

But it is ignored, or it puts the offender further away from the goal of compensating others for his actions and straightening out his life. 

Read it at Columbus Dispatch