UC Irvine Law Review

Traffic tickets can be big business for government. Every year, traffic tickets generate hundreds of millions, if not billions, of dollars in revenue for state and local governments nationwide. That revenue is then allocated to support a wide variety of government programs, some of which have nothing to do with traffic violations. The burdens of financial penalties in traffic cases (including base fines, court costs and fees, and surcharges) fall disproportionately on the most financially vulnerable individuals and communities, including low-income people and overpoliced communities of color.

The main contribution of this Article is that it sketches core elements of a more just and equitable legal framework to guide traffic penalty systems. As explained, current traffic penalty systems rest on a false choice between fines and incarceration—namely, that fines are a necessary and practical alternative to avoid the social costs of incarceration for violations of minor traffic regulations. The proposed framework in this Article moves beyond this false choice to provide a different normative vision of when and how governments may impose financial penalties for traffic violations and how governments may allocate and use traffic penalty revenue. The framework is organized along six dimensions: (1) the types of allowable financial penalties for traffic violations, (2) how to calculate financial penalties imposed, (3) when financial penalties for traffic violations may be imposed, (4) the proper allocation and use of traffic penalty revenue, (5) the treatment of individuals with limited financial means to pay, and (6) transparency and accountability measures.

This Article provides a comprehensive analysis of important criminal-justice-related and transportation-related benefits of reimagining traffic fine and fee systems in ways that align with the proposed framework. Those benefits include reducing the criminalization of poverty and the net-widening of the criminal justice system through traffic enforcement, aligning traffic penalties with the realities of overregulation and selective and discriminatory traffic enforcement, combating government incentives for revenue generation through traffic enforcement, complementing and strengthening traffic policing reforms, and improving considerations of racial and class equity in transportation law and policy. This Article concludes by addressing potential objections to the proposed framework.