This ACLU research report, “Reckless Lawmaking: How Debt-Based Driver's License Suspension Laws Impose Harm and Waste Resources,” documents the pervasive practice of using driver’s license suspension as a consequence for unpaid fines and fees.
This ACLU research report, “Reckless Lawmaking: How Debt-Based Driver's License Suspension Laws Impose Harm and Waste Resources,” documents the pervasive practice of using driver’s license suspension as a consequence for unpaid fines and fees.
Through policy analysis and individual interviews with those who had their license suspended, this report provides an in-depth examination of this common practice of debt-based suspensions and demonstrates how court ordered monetary obligations, or “fines and fees,” are inextricably linked to over-policing, criminalization, and mass incarceration. It provides detailed recommendations for policymakers and DMVs, calls for lawmakers to more accurately consider the value of continuing to fund government services through predatory fines and fees in light of the consequent harm, and proposes concrete policy reforms for states and municipalities.
This report examines past and continued use of solitary confinement by the Colorado Department of Corrections (CDOC) to manage mentally ill prisoners; considers the moral, fiscal, safety and legal implications of CDOC’s continued warehousing of mentally ill prisoners in solitary confinement; and makes recommendations to bring Colorado’s prisons in line with modern psychiatric, correctional and legal standards. The report draws on 18 months of research by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Colorado, which included correspondence with mentally ill prisoners housed in solitary confinement by CDOC; analysis of data provided by the CDOC in response to over a dozen public records requests by the ACLU, as well as other publicly available CDOC records; in-depth review of several prisoner mental health files; extensive written and in-person dialogue with CDOC’s executive team; on site visits to CDOC; and multiple consultations with correctional and psychiatric experts.
