Utah law still maintains a relic of the drug war proven to be a roadblock to the successful rehabilitation of drug offenders by suspending their driver licenses for certain drug offenses, even though they are unrelated to any driving offense.
Suspending a driver license for a non-driving-related behavior creates an unnecessary harm that can result in a person’s inability to obtain or maintain gainful employment, which is harmful not only to the offender, but to their family.
A lack of gainful employment is a roadblock to successful rehabilitation, and it tends to push people deeper into the criminal justice system. When funding and public safety resources are diverted from addressing dangerous and unsafe driving behaviors in order to address non-driving-related license suspension activity, our roads are made less safe. Unnecessary license suspensions increase the number of uninsured drivers, since many unlicensed people will end up driving out of necessity, especially in areas where public transportation is inadequate or unavailable, as is the case in much of Utah.
Driver license suspension for non-driving-related offenses is counterproductive, bad policy, a waste of public resources, and a deterrent to a drug offender’s successful completion of probation and rehabilitation.
Robert Bohman, Morgan