Costs and Consequences of Traffic Fines and Fees: A Case Study of Open Warrants in Las Vegas, Nevada

Foster Kamanga,Vincent Fuentes,Daniel Okamura,Virginia Smercina,Barbara G Brents

doi:10.3390/socsci10110440

Abstract

Traffic stops and tickets often have far-reaching consequences for poor and marginalized communities, yet resulting fines and fees increasingly fund local court systems. This paper critically explores who bears the brunt of traffic fines and fees in Nevada, historically one of the fastest growing and increasingly diverse states in the nation, and one of thirteen US states to prosecute minor traffic violations as criminal misdemeanors rather than civil infractions. Drawing on legislative histories, we find that state legislators in Nevada increased fines and fees to raise revenues. Using descriptive statistics to analyze the 2012–2020 open arrest warrants extracted from the Las Vegas Municipal Court, we find that 58.6% of all open warrants are from failure to pay tickets owing to administrative-related offenses—vehicle registration and maintenance, no license or plates, or no insurance. Those issued warrants for failure to pay are disproportionately for people who are Black and from the poorest areas in the region. Ultimately, the Nevada system of monetary traffic sanctions criminalizes poverty and reinforces racial disparities.

Highlights

Because unpaid traffic fines and fees turn into bench warrants, we considered who is most impacted by traffic fines and fees when they cannot pay by examining the demographics of individuals and the violations incurred among those with outstanding traffic warrants in one of its courts, the Las Vegas Municipal Court
The data we examined, as well as a study by Martin (2018), indicates that Nevada raised traffic fines and fees to meet budget shortfalls, not to discourage traffic violations
For a finer-grained analysis of the likely income of individuals with bench warrants, we examine the median income of census block groups containing the addresses of individuals with bench warrants

Summary

Introduction

The number of fines and fees imposed by local justice systems has increased dramatically since the 1980s in the US (Foster 2017), amounting to what Su (2020) labels as “taxation by citation”. While some find that increasing monetary sanctions discourage traffic violations, there is increasing evidence that local governments across the globe rely on traffic related monetary sanctions to fund services (Singla et al 2020; Su 2020; Garrett and Wagner 2009; Makowsky and Stratmann 2009). Failure to pay a fine or a fee in Nevada results in what is called a bench warrant, wherein the judicial system asks for a person to be brought before a judge. Given evidence that monetary sanctions foster inequality and disproportionately impact the poor and communities who may already suffer racial or ethnic discrimination, we ask: does

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