driver's licenses

[Parasaurolophus]

Doesn't restitution seem more valuable to the victims than a vote on petty retribution decades after the fact?

[lightning]

Doesn't restitution seem more valuable to the victims than a vote on petty retribution decades after the fact?

Of course restitution is better, but that doesn't seem to be an option, in the original case presented by the OP. 

[Anselm]

It is a stupid law.  It has no affect on the wealthy guy on Park Avenue who takes subways and taxis in NYC and does not own a car.   I can sort of get by without a car if needed but others absolutely can not. There are better ways to get money from the deadbeats.

[jerseyjay]

I think there are several questions touched upon here.

1. Effectiveness. It would seem that the most effective measure is if the government garnishes somebody's wages. Taking away a professional license (medical license, say), might work. Taking away somebody's driver license might work, or it might cause somebody to drive without a license or take public transportation. In this particular case, it obviously did not work. I suppose some of comes down to WHY the father did not pay child support. That is, somebody who is marginally employed and can barely pay the rent is different than a highly-paid professional who just doesn't want to pay.

2. Morality. This is a whole other issue.

3. Longevity. Somebody who has a child should help support the child. But how long should this hang over somebody? In New Jersey, the statue of limitations for prosecuting most crimes is five years, although there is no limitation for rape or murder. Arguably, if somebody fathered and abandoned a child 42 years ago (i.e., during the first Reagan administration), much has happened since then. He should have helped, but is there a point to continuing to prevent him from driving?

4. Practicality. If a 62 year old suddenly decides to make good on the child support, how, exactly, should he do this? If he owed $100/month (which I know is low), should he send a check for $21,600 ($100x12x18) ... to the mother? To the child? To the government? Should he include compound interest?

I can think of other questions, too: should the OP be friends with somebody like this? What should the person involved do to get his driver's license? What should the mother or the child do?

[Caracal]

4. Practicality. If a 62 year old suddenly decides to make good on the child support, how, exactly, should he do this? If he owed $100/month (which I know is low), should he send a check for $21,600 ($100x12x18) ... to the mother? To the child? To the government? Should he include compound interest?


[/quote]

Apparently, a pretty significant amount of back child pay is owed to governments. If the child qualified for various programs because of the lack of monetary support from a parent, the government is owed that money.

[Caracal]

What saddens me is that you make no mention of the victims of the deadbeat, which is why my proposed solution included the involvement of the victims. I wanted to see if you cared at all about the victims in this specific case. Please say that you do.

People should pay their child support. Not even trying to do so is a moral failure, as is failing to be involved in a kid's life. How his kid or the kid's mother feel about him is a private issue and there's no reason to connect it to the question of whether he can have a driver's license 40 years later. To me, it seems like asking someone to decide whether their absent father can get a driver's license is an undue burden to put on them. I would imagine the response of many 40 year old people would be "why the hell are you asking me? This isn't something I want to bring into my life, but now I feel like if I say I don't want anything to with it, I'm keeping him from getting a license."

[downer]

Interesting article here about effective and counter-productive policies regarding deadbeat parents.

Regarding suspension of driver's licences, looks like most states have some such policy. Seems to be due to a requirement from congress. This report on the issue is thorough.

Data
In FY2009, about $32 billion30 was collected from noncustodial parents by CSE agencies. CSE annual program data do not specifically report on the amount of child support obtained due to state driver's license suspension policies. States often include those collection totals with data related to other license suspension policies (e.g., professional and recreational) and more often than not such collections are contained in a category called "other." In FY2009, $5.1 billion was collected through this "other" sources category. (See Table 1.)

The most effective child support enforcement tool is income withholding, a procedure by which automatic deductions are made from wages or other income. Once initiated, income withholding can keep support flowing to the family on a regular basis. As shown in Table 1, in FY2009, about 67% of child support collections were obtained through income withholding, 6% by way of the federal income tax refund offset, 5% from the unemployment intercept offset, 4% from other states, about 1% from the state income tax refund offset, and 16% from other sources.

[Caracal]

Interesting article here about effective and counter-productive policies regarding deadbeat parents.

Regarding suspension of driver's licences, looks like most states have some such policy. Seems to be due to a requirement from congress. This report on the issue is thorough.

Data
In FY2009, about $32 billion30 was collected from noncustodial parents by CSE agencies. CSE annual program data do not specifically report on the amount of child support obtained due to state driver's license suspension policies. States often include those collection totals with data related to other license suspension policies (e.g., professional and recreational) and more often than not such collections are contained in a category called "other." In FY2009, $5.1 billion was collected through this "other" sources category. (See Table 1.)

The most effective child support enforcement tool is income withholding, a procedure by which automatic deductions are made from wages or other income. Once initiated, income withholding can keep support flowing to the family on a regular basis. As shown in Table 1, in FY2009, about 67% of child support collections were obtained through income withholding, 6% by way of the federal income tax refund offset, 5% from the unemployment intercept offset, 4% from other states, about 1% from the state income tax refund offset, and 16% from other sources.

Thanks, that's helpful. The opinion piece highlights something we might be missing. We have all been assuming this guy had no involvement in the kid's life, but that might not actually be the case. He also might not have been able to pay child support, or alternatively, made some poor financial decisions at 21, fell behind in the payments, and they ballooned to an amount he could never pay. But, we should be careful not to assume that means he never supported the kid in any way, or was completely absent.

[marshwiggle]

I think there are several questions touched upon here.

1. Effectiveness. It would seem that the most effective measure is if the government garnishes somebody's wages. Taking away a professional license (medical license, say), might work.

This seems ridiculously counterproductive. A professional license makes it possible for someone to earn more money than they would otherwise, so revoking (or suspending) a professional license would make the person less able to pay the debt. As others have said, there surely have to be better ways of garnisheeing wages ( or maybe adding to a person's tax bill?) that actually leverage the person's high earning ability.

(And for many people lower on the economic ladder, revoking the driver's license may also make it much harder for the person to make money. It seems to be a case of cutting off one's nose to spite one's face.)

[clean]

4. Practicality. If a 62 year old suddenly decides to make good on the child support, how, exactly, should he do this? If he owed $100/month (which I know is low), should he send a check for $21,600 ($100x12x18) ... to the mother? To the child? To the government? Should he include compound interest?

IF you have your license suspended, then the government/state agency is involved. They will track what you owe (if there is interest, include it), and most likely you will pay that to the state and the state will forward it to the proper person.  But there are 50 states and assorted territories, so that may not be the universal standard, and as soon as I would say 'every state' someone would be the exception! 

[apl68]

I am, for personal reasons, finding it helpful to solicit opinions on the following topic: there is a guy in my church, 62, who lost his DL about 15 years ago, not for physical reasons or criminal ones, but as sanction from the state for long-standing arrears of back child support obligations for a daughter born (I think) out of wedlock when he was maybe 19 or 20.   His relationship with the girl's mom ended soon after she was born, and fairly soon thereafter he just stopped paying support.   So when the law was changed allowing DL suspension, even though the daughter was of age, the debt remained.   I do not know how much the debt is, but it could be in the low five figures (I asked the pastor at the time if the church could pass the plate and come up with a grand to pay it off and get him back on the road, but he told me that it was much more than this).  As a guy whose quite frankly deadbeat daddy more or less never paid any child support for my brother and me, and disappeared fully before I was ten, I confess to having enormously little sympathy for deadbeat daddios.  I certainly encourage state action to make 'em pay up, but wonder whether the DL removal thing is counterproductive?  Thoughts?

Suspending a driver's license to punish behavior that really has nothing to do with driving seems counterproductive, all right.  So he has been without a license for 15 years now?  That sounds like a good way to push somebody into poverty so that he'll probably never be able to pay his obligations.

The New Testament takes offenses like this very seriously as a moral and ethical issue.  In Paul's first letter to Timothy he says that anybody who will not support his own family "has denied the faith and become worse than an unbeliever."  If this man is an active member of your church, then surely he has long since tried to own up to what he did wrong in his youth?  He's not paying now not because he refuses, but because he simply doesn't have the money?  Sometimes people have to pay a heavy ongoing price for past wrongs even after they've repented of them.

If the man truly wants to make practical amends for his past sins, and is willing to put some money into it--even if it's just a little and comes as a real sacrifice to him--then it would be a real act of grace for other church members to help him with that.  The gesture might even help to pave the way for an eventual reconciliation with his estranged daughter.  Whether there's a practical way to pay the whole debt off gradually, I don't know, but the state really ought to allow some means of making good-faith efforts to do so for the rare deadbeat dad who's actually owned up to his responsibility.

[Hegemony]

All you law-abiding citizens seem to think that suspending a person's driver's license will keep them from driving. Sure, it should keep them from driving. I don't know what the statistics are, but I know a whole lot of people are out there driving without licenses. Both times when my car was hit by another car, the driver had no license. (And no insurance.) And a great many drunk drivers have had their licenses taken away and they keep on driving.

I know you may well say, "But the design of this is bad, even if the guy keeps on driving." That may well be. But my guess is that he's still driving.

[dismalist]

The discussion here made me think of debtor's prison: By imprisoning one takes away the ability of anyone to work and therefore even marginally pay off the debt. Taking away driving or other licenses amounts to the same thing.

So, how did debtor's prison end? There is talk of the usual "we got more civilized", around 1833 in the US of A. But guess what? The abolition of debtor's prison was contemporaneous with the sophistication of bankruptcy law! That is to say, if it is determined that somebody cannot pay his or her debt by outside pre-determined standards, the debt is extinguished.

But did debtor's prison end completely?

Apparently not. Here is a description of what goes on in law and practice https://www.themarshallproject.org/2015/02/24/debtors-prisons-then-and-now-faq Though the case of unpaid child support is not mentioned, the criminal vs. civil aspects of all such case are completely ambiguous.

The law on child support is completely inefficient and smacks of a reluctance to decide on how to treat it. Garnishment of wages and/or bankruptcy would be fine in civil cases, but the changeover to criminal behavior, if any, must be made clear.

Don't sneeze at bankruptcy: Student loans cannot be discharged in bankruptcy. I suppose deadbeat borrowers will have to go to jail at some stage.

[clean]

seem to think that suspending a person's driver's license will keep them from driving. Sure, it should keep them from driving. I don't know what the statistics are, but I know a whole lot of people are out there driving without licenses. Both times when my car was hit by another car, the driver had no license. (And no insurance.) And a great many drunk drivers have had their licenses taken away and they keep on driving.

I, for one, and more than aware of the numbers driving without a license. 
But get pulled over or in an accident without one and you might end up in jail anyway.  Now for a criminal complaint. 

having a valid license or insurance does not prevent you from getting into accidents.  Having insurance at least softens the blow to your pocketbook, though.

As for debtor's prison, my mind wanders to Ebenezer Scrooge... "are there not debtors prisons or work camps?..." and in response to the notion that "some would rather die"... the reply "then let them get about it and reduce the surplus population".   
(I studied the Dismal Sciences myself). 

Does the punishment fit the crime?  Does it deter people from skipping their child support payments?
Maybe no (a value judgement/  and what would be an appropriate punishment related to not supporting your children?).  for the second, probably yes!  Take away a license to drive, as well as the professional licenses of those with them, and you will see more compliance! 

"Poor people dont have professional licenses"  you say?  Well, that may be why they are poor!  Lots of trades pay better than professors! 

Garnish wages?  Well then some wont work at all (in the legitimate economy.  Thus creating an IRS issue IF they get caught!) 

I hear it takes a village to raise a child.  It certainly takes a village to support one if the deadbeat shirks on his/her responsibility!  It is not the child's fault that the parent is a deadbeat, but they suffer most.  So anything that can be done to collect is fine with me!  Support the children, not the deadbeat's take home pay! 

At the extreme, we heard recently about riots in Iran. Then we heard about Iran hanging rioters (age 20 somethings!).  Now we dont hear about riots OR hangings!  What would it take (short of hanging mind you,) that would work? 

Im off on a tangent. 
Tell us what would work?

[dismalist]

Tell us what would work?

There are tradeoffs wherever one looks!

It seems to me garnishment is the best answer to current liabilities. It reduces paid work effort, but a lot less than than pay in a labor camp. [Hell, even Beria wanted to end forced labor for that reason -- he wasn't the humanitarian.]

Then it's also best for past liabilities for the victims -- mother and child and the state -- are owed something.

So, greatest net benefits come from garnishment, the freedom lover's labor camp.

'Could be the deterrence effect of harsh punishment is so great that the number of deadbeats falls so much that society is better off [measured in dollars], but some victims still have to be compensated! Taxpayers could possibly do that and still be better off, never mind the losses of the deterees. I just don't think that that's true. Free riding is too easy and tempting for enough men.

Balancing all these unknowns I'd say garnishment plus a penal tax [on account deterrence helps] for as long as it takes to pay what's due.