Driver’s License Suspensions, Social Compliance, and the Reproduction of Racial Inequality
Maureen Waller1, Nathan Robbins2, Peter Rich2
1Cornell Univeristy, 2Cornell University
Driver’s license suspensions have increasingly been used to enforce social compliance and generate government revenue, potentially leading to a cycle of unpaid debt and entanglement with the criminal legal system in lower-income, communities of color. Using information from the New York Department of Motor Vehicles for all suspensions in 2017 (n=1,149,001) linked with American Community Survey data, we examine whether zip codes with more Black and Latinx residents experienced higher suspension rates, including for reasons reflecting an “inability” and presumed “unwillingness” to comply. Preliminary results suggest that the overwhelming majority of suspensions are for social noncompliance reasons, that race is highly predictive of suspensions even after adjusting for geographic and economic variables, and that suspensions are geographically concentrated.