Oklahoma Weighs Ending License Suspensions Over Unpaid Court Debt

What happened

About 180,000 Oklahomans have an active driver’s license suspension tied to unpaid court debt, and the average suspension lasts 38 months, Oklahoma Watch reported in a story distributed by The Associated Press. The report said the 180,000 figure came from Michael Olson of Oklahomans for Criminal Justice Reform and the 38-month average came from Service Oklahoma. Under state law, district and municipal judges can direct Service Oklahoma to suspend a license when a person misses a payment or fails to appear in court. According to the outlet, enforcement varies by county and is more common in rural areas.

Lawmakers looked at the issue during an interim study at the state Capitol on Oct. 13, according to Oklahoma Watch. Joseph Brantley, who spoke at the study, described how hard life after prison was with a suspended license. In an interview with the outlet, he said the Legislature should take up reform next year, and that court debt comes on top of car insurance, rent and groceries. “It’s such a vicious cycle and a vicious thing to get out of,” Brantley told Oklahoma Watch.

Advocates told lawmakers that ending the practice would not hurt collections and could help more people work, Oklahoma Watch reported. Sarah Couture, a regional director at the Fines and Fees Justice Center, said the state could bring in tens of millions of dollars in new tax revenue if it stopped. The report cited California, where on-time collection rates for non-delinquent accounts rose 8.9% after the state stopped these suspensions in 2017, and Tennessee researchers who studied data from 2011 through 2021 and found revocations did not improve collections. At least 25 states have ended the practice, according to the report.

The hearing did not settle the question. According to accounts of Oklahoma Watch’s reporting, lawmakers heard competing arguments over whether suspensions help courts collect or make it harder for people to work and pay. An interim study is a hearing, not a bill. The reporting we reviewed does not describe any legislation filed so far.

Our reflection

Brantley served his sentence and came home to a state that expected him to work and pay what he owed. Then it took away how he got to work. Think about what 38 months is in a man’s life. Three winters of asking for rides, and shifts you turn down because you can’t get there. All that time the balance sits untouched, and the thing you need to pay it is locked away.

The law of Moses saw this trap. “No one shall take a mill or an upper millstone in pledge, for that would be taking a life in pledge.” A family ground its daily bread on that stone. God told lenders they could collect, but they could not take the tool a person lives by, because then they were holding his life as collateral. In rural Oklahoma a car is a millstone.

Jesus told a story about the same trap. In Matthew 18 a servant is forgiven a debt he could never repay, then has a man who owes him a little thrown in prison “until he should pay the debt.” Prison is the one place nobody can earn a dime. Jesus aimed that story at people who keep score, and that is most of us. We want accountability for others and patience for ourselves. So before we talk about Oklahoma, ask who you have suspended. Maybe it is the brother or the old friend you cut off until they pay you back in full, from a place where you made sure they can’t.

Grace does not pretend debts are not real. It refuses to make paying them impossible. When Jesus read Isaiah in Nazareth he announced “the year of the Lord’s favor,” words that call back the Jubilee, when debts were released so families could start again. At the cross that Jubilee got personal. A debt we could not pay was paid, and our lives were handed back so we could walk again.

This one can be fixed. At least 25 states have stopped, and the California and Tennessee numbers in the reporting suggest collections did not suffer when license suspensions ended or did not work when they were used. A state can keep suspending licenses for dangerous driving and still let a man drive to the job that pays the court.

Policy is only half of it. A person coming home also needs someone to read the notice with him, stand with him at the clerk’s window, call Service Oklahoma and give him rides until the license comes back. That is what re-entry mentoring looks like on a Tuesday. Our financial literacy work starts there too, with every bill on one page and someone beside him who doesn’t flinch at the total.

If you live in Oklahoma, your lawmakers just heard this testimony and they can hear from you too, and wherever you live you can find out whether your state still does this. If you have someone in suspension in your own life, this week would be a good time to hand back the keys.

No one shall take a mill or an upper millstone in pledge, for that would be taking a life in pledge.

Deuteronomy 24:6

Source: Oklahoma Watch (distributed by The Associated Press), “Driver’s License Suspensions for Court Debt Draw Scrutiny”