Spring has come to Albion, most notably in the way snow has been replaced by rain. Winter snow provides a kind of reprieve for poverty; like charity, it covers a multitude of sins. Run-down houses, vacant lots, cracked sidewalks, weedy lawns -- all are hidden behind the white of winter.

No longer. As winter's cover is washed away the distinctions between poverty and wealth begin to seem less like lines and more like impassable chasms. While Albion doesn't have any visible examples of extreme affluence (see my post from a few days ago) the division between the needs and haves is apparent, perhaps most so in the clientele who visit my office.

A note is needed here regarding where we've been and where we seem to be headed in Michigan in terms of our laws and our criminal justice system.

You may not know this but about 20 years ago Michigan legislators began to take advantage of the effect shame could have on deterring crime. Shame has been used as a deterrent to criminal behavior about as long, I suppose, as humans have been writing laws. This is why we force jail inmates to pick up trash from the side of the road; not that having clean roadsides isn't a nice thing to have, but let's face it there are other more useful and helpful things we could be having them do that would benefit society more.

But regarding shame, in the late 1980's, a law was enacted that allowed police officers to confiscate the driver licenses of drivers who were under reasonable suspicion of driving while impaired or intoxicated.

That law stands to this day, and the way it works is this: if you're pulled over by a police officer with probable cause (driving erratically, speeding, etc.) and the officer believes you may have been consuming alcohol before driving, your driver license is confiscated and destroyed. As a replacement license -- because after all, you haven't actually been convicted of any crime, only accused at this point -- the officer issues you a paper permit to drive with, which essentially does this: notifies anyone who needs to see your driver license that you are believed to be a drunk driver. The idea is to provide an external motivator to all of us to not get ourselves into this position in the first place; and, for anyone caught and issued the permit, it provides the element of shame to prevent future occurrences.

If the language of my writing makes it sound like I don't like this system, let me here explain that I'm actually ambivalent toward it. But I will say this, it would seem that though drunk driving rates have leveled off over the last 20 years, I would doubt that this law has had little if any effect in reducing drunk driving.

In part I believe this from anecdotal evidence. Working in Secretary of State branch offices, I have come to believe there has never been and will never be a shortage of people willing to have a few beers and then get behind the wheel of a car. But also, I've seen numerous people who have no idea how the system is supposed to work -- so the idea that giving them a paper permit to shame them into not driving drunk borders on the absurd.

In writing about this I could cite an abundance of cases in which the law has actually worked and not worked as a deterrent.

I dealt with one woman about three years ago who I believe will never, ever drive drunk again. I called her to the counter and the best word to describe her demeanor was embarrassment. Though there was only one other person in the office (and clearly not someone she knew) she slinked to the counter, handed me the permit she'd been issued, and whispered to me as she leaned over the counter that she wasn't sure what she was supposed to do next to get her license back.

Clearly, the law was designed for people like this.

But she is clearly, of course, the exception to the rule and the reason is this: she lives in a sub-culture of our society for whom drunk driving is a horrible embarrassment.

In other words, she does not live in poverty.

She stands on one side of the chasm that divides poor and rich. It's funny, too, because of the hundreds of people I've talked to about their problems with suspended driver licenses, she is undoubtedly one of the few who would feel the punishment of our drunk driving laws as a minor sting rather than a bruising blow. She can afford the pay the legal fees, court fees, state costs, and traffic citation fine itself and this, coupled with her embarrassment, will be enough to prevent her from ever driving drunk again.

In contrast to this middle-aged woman stand a line of poor, mostly male drivers who are in my office almost every day. If the middle-class woman's embarrassment (and reasonable wealth) will ensure she never loses her driver license again to a drunk driving charge, then the actions of the poor almost surely guarantee the opposite for them.

One of my clerks waited on a young man this week who'd spent over four thousand dollars clearing multiple license suspensions and state fines to try to get his license reinstated. About four months ago, I waited on woman in her mid-twenties doing almost exactly the same thing. This past Friday, a clerk waited on a man who'd recently been cited driving suspended -- his license had been revoked two decades ago.

These people all live in extreme poverty. I know because I know where they live, and in most cases, where they work if they have jobs at all. I see them and people like them every day.

Clearly, then, shame as a deterrent has not worked. In part, this seems because with drunk driving ingrained into the culture of poverty, the element of shame is gone. The drunk driver is only doing what everybody else does; it has been modeled for him his entire life.

Our society has come up with a solution. With other avenues now cut off (such as corporal punishment and lengthy prison terms) the only thing we have left is this: levying even heavier fines for people found guilty of certain driving offenses.

The absurdity of this should seem painfully obvious, but to make sure we're all on the same page, let me paint the picture:

We've come to a point where legislators feel they've had their hands tied too long. They are right. Our society refuses to hold people accountable for their actions with lengthy prison terms, mostly because we simply can't afford to put more people in prison. We have done away with corporal punishment -- public floggings, putting people in stocks, etc. -- and so with no other choice available, out of frustration our legislature has decided fines are the only choice left.

Interesting to note here also that we no longer put people in debtor's prisons for failing to pay back loans, even outrageous loans like thousands of dollars in credit card debt or second and third mortgages on vacation properties.

Yet boxing people into the corner of paying heavier and heavier fines to make up for their unacceptable behavior is where we've turned.

There are numerous problems with this which are apparent, I think, just from my description of the current state of our affairs but let me point out two major problems with this system: First, without a driver license, obtaining employment -- any employment -- is extremely difficult, so how could one possibly hope to pay back the fines and costs that driving drunk brings? And second, the poor are already wallowing in the hopelessness of their situation; beyond a certain point, you might as well ask them to pay down the national debt -- in their own minds, they'll NEVER get out of the situation they're in.

For the most part, they are correct. They will never get out of debt. Their cycle of poverty is just that: cyclical. They will live their lives in debt, and then hand the cycle of debt to their children who, instead of inheriting trust funds or the deed to a house, will instead inherit the on debt of providing a funeral.

I type this fully aware that I sound like a far-left liberal, which I am not. If you're curious, I've grown up in an Evangelical Christian household, I was a raving Reagan supporter even before I was old enough to vote, and I voted for Bush in 2000 (yes, the blackest spot on my voting record -- but I'm digressing.) I now consider myself neither Republican nor Democrat, and in writing all of this, the pragmatist in me sees that though the system is working -- we are, after all, taking in MILLIONS of dollars in Michigan alone and people are willing to pay the fines -- the system is also greatly skewed to favor the middle and upper classes.

And saying something like 'well life isn't fair' only serves to dismiss the nagging feeling we all have in our consciences when we try to face facts as difficult as these. Should we, as a society, not TRY to make things more fair? Should we accept the system the way it is, allowing people (i.e. the middle and upper class) to buy their way out of criminal sanctions?

And what price are we willing to pay to ensure public safety on our roadways? Until we can figure that out, I shudder to think where we're headed in another 20 years.

If fining the poor for their actions doesn't work, what's left???