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BRANDON GARRETT: Well, welcome everyone. I wanted to kick things off. Thank you all so much for being here. I know there's a lot going on. With every day that passes, we get closer to the end of the semester here. And the weather is beautiful, it's spring outside. We want to talk to you all today about a topic which isn't beautiful or springy. Today we launch a report that a number of us here at Duke have been working on for many months now. And we have some leading people in the community organizing, and in law, and in politics here to talk about a really important problem that many people may not have focused on in North Carolina. And that's the problem of driver's license suspensions. We describe how 1.25 million people are affected right now by these suspensions. Many more have been affected over time. I want to thank a few people who made this report and this event today possible. But then I want to leave it to our panel. We have incredible speakers. I'll introduce them to you. They'll tell you their stories. And we have a small group today. I hope you all chime in with questions, because our goal is to just help you all understand with what kind of work and efforts we're all involved, and to try to do something about this terrible problem. So I want to thank, first, the Administrative Office of the Courts in North Carolina that shared some-- and the Access to Justice Commission-- they shared data with us that was an enormous amount of work to look at, as Will Crozier will talk about. And it's the tireless work of Daniel Bowes, who will speak first, in the North Carolina Justice Center, that really made this effort of ours to study this data possible. Daniel Bowes will talk first. He's a senior attorney at the North Carolina Justice Center in their Workers' Rights Project. He went to Duke and then went to law school in New York. He a supervising attorney of Legal Aid in North Carolina. He's on the advisory board of our Children's Place, which is a nonprofit for children in North Carolina with incarcerated parents. And he's done tireless work statewide on collateral consequences of criminal records, and specifically on this problem of driver's license restoration. So I'll have him talk a little bit about the work he's doing statewide. Then I want us to hear from, just to his left, if you're facing, is Andrea Hudson Muffin, well-known here in Durham and around the state for her tireless civil rights work. She's a nonprofit bail fund director at the Southern Coalition for Southern Justice. She's on the Durham Human Relations Commission. She's involved with the Durham Participatory Defense, Spirit House North Carolina, many organizations. She is everywhere. And she's going to talk about her story and her work. Diana Powell is a community advocate who lives in Raleigh. She's an executive director of Justice Served North Carolina. And she's also going to share her story with us about how these fines and fees have affected her. Will Crozier will then speak. He's a postdoc researcher here at Duke Law School. He's a psychologist. And he had-- he was having nightmares about commas. He was dealing with this database with four million rows, all comma delimited text files, to translate this massive data dump into something that we can learn from. And finally, Representative Marcia Morey is representative in the 14th District-- District 30, I'm sorry-- she's a district attorney in the 14th Judicial District, former district judge here in Durham. She wrote an incredibly moving column while judge about drivers license suspensions happening in her courtroom. And she took important action to try to address that here in Durham. And she was a chief district judge and is now a representative. She's been in the state house since 2017. She's also had a real focus on issues affecting children. She has a master's degree in education. And was also a district attorney, so intersection between juvenile issues, education issues, the criminal justice system, all in her wheelhouse, representing us in Raleigh. So why don't we start with you, Daniel, and hear about the work you've been trying to do to restore rights and to raise awareness about this problem, to try to bring people together to solve this problem. DANIEL BOWES: OK, thank you for inviting us all here. And I'll start by just thanking and congratulating you and Will for how quickly you all analyzed this data. You just got it in September. And so it's nice to see you being able to draw strong conclusions from it and already sort of uplifting the lessons. So thank you for that. As Brandon said, my name is Daniel Bowes. I'm with the North Carolina Justice Center. And for several years, we've worked with a coalition of advocacy groups and impacted people to look at fines and fees, and just how sort of it's becoming even more impactful on people's lives, in some cases, sending people back to prison, extending their probation. And more and more, what we were looking at was in the context of traffic offenses suspending their license indefinitely. And so I personally started looking at driver's license issues probably about two years ago. And what we saw was is that is just getting worse and worse. Because for almost 25 years now, the legislature has been steadily increasing the fees that are attached to a court cost. And so the one that I throw out is the general court of justice fee was $47 in 1995. Now it's $147.50. If you have a traffic offense, that's an extra $10. If you plead down and take a deal for improper equipment, which is better a lot of ways, they charge you an additional $50. And those are just sort of traffic offenses. That's not to mention if somebody can't afford bail, is in pretrial confinement, that's $10 per day that they owe if they're convicted. And so, again, it's just leading to a huge impact on people's lives. And in the context of a driver's license, when you go to court and pay, for example, a $10 fine, and then have $200 in court costs, it's not meant to be punitive, it's just sort of an administrative fee, if you don't pay that in 100 days, then in North Carolina, you automatically indefinitely lose your license. Now, if you compare that to the other range of ways that you can lose your license, for example, a DWI, you get convicted of a DWI, and you lose your license just for one year. And even after-- even at that time, as soon as you lose it, you can get a limited driving privilege. And so, that's just one example of how people not having money, and not being in a position to pay off these fees and fines is actually being treated-- being treated worse and having a much more destructive impact on their lives than the criminal issues that we, as a society, sort of agree should be punished and should lead generally to somebody not being able to drive. And so, I think what's made this particularly bad in the last few years is that in addition to having this steady increase in fees, what you've seen as an aggressive effort in the North Carolina legislature to basically undermine the safety valve that's there, and basically limit the willingness of judges to waive fees. And basically, they've put up a lot of political barriers and a lot of procedural barriers. Haven't taken away the ultimate discretion, but have made it seem to judges very costly to actually eliminate-- to waive those fees. And so, we just got a report in February 2019 that showed that last year, whereas it was something like in 850,000 cases that courts costs were ordered, only in 25,000 cases were the fees waived. So just think about that, and think about who's going through our court system, and think about how out of whack that is. So that's sort of the problem. And what we've done is work with district attorneys to try to address it. We use the same data that Duke has analyzed here to actually target relief to individuals and communities. And at the Justice Center, one of our primary change strategies is to partner with district attorneys to make available and more accessible whatever statutory relief is currently available. And through that, you also activate district attorneys as advocates. And the people you're serving, you engage them, and try to advocate for policy change at the state legislature. So make successful, whatever relief is currently available, and then also with the end goal of actually expanding the type of relief that would be available through policy change. And so, we did that successfully a few years ago with expunctions, and we continue to work on that. But that's where our model with the driver's license restoration program and partnering with several DAs on this issue. I'll just take my last minute here to highlight what's happening in Durham, which is that they've identified 15,000 cases, where they are more than two years old and don't involve a high-risk traffic offense, like a DWI, fleeing to elude, 15,000 cases where somebody went to court and then had their license suspended after 100 days based on failure to pay. The average length of those suspensions is 16 years. So the biggest finding that I've had in serving people on this issue, but also looking at the data is, for a lot of people, once you get into this cycle, you don't get out. The number that the DMV gave us in August 2017 that really started me down this road was that there were 1.2 million people with a suspension for either a failure to appear or a failure to pay. And in the previous 12 months, only 59,000 people had resolved all their failure to appear or failure to pay suspensions and actually reinstated their license. So again, once you get into the cycle, you don't break it. And so that has extreme consequences on the individual and on their family, but also has broader consequences on other drivers and on the community. And so, I really appreciate what Durham is doing, which is now the DA is actually going into court and saying, the proper administration of justice demands that these fees be remitted, be eliminated, and that the driver's license be restored. And so they've already done-- they started that in December, and have already done about 1,700 cases. And actually remitted all fees and fines for those for 1,200 individuals. And they, over the course of the next year, we'll try to get through all 15,000 of those. In the last 30 seconds, I'll just say that what we're learning quickly is you need a regional approach to this, that we can clear up all the issues in Durham but people also have issues in Wake County, Orange County. They generally don't just drive in one county. And so a regional or statewide approach is necessary. Also, this really intersects with failures to appear. If somebody goes to court, and doesn't have the money to pay it-- again, a $10 fine, $200 in court costs, and then has a suspension, most drivers do continue to drive, according to studies. And when they get that, when they get pulled over for that driving with a license revoked, a lot of those individuals choose not to go to court, because they sort of know how it goes in the first place, and that they don't have the money to pay it. And so, I will say that's my conjecture of what's happening there. Maybe the data will show us some other things. But it's important for DAs to also try to deal with failures to appear. And there's a tool that was made available in the last year, from the Administrative Office of the Courts, that allows DAs to take mass dismissals, to basically provide criteria to the Administrative Office of the Courts, to say I want to dismiss cases that are more than five years old in these type of offenses. And then basically, just sit there and sign a page that has 100 file numbers on it, and then those are dismissed. And so Durham went through that process, dismissed 70,000 cases on January 8, 2019. And 50,000 of those were traffic offenses. And so that's something that we're asking DAs around the state to do. Now, the last thing I'll highlight is, one of the problems with this is, that we just found out last week, is that the DMV is not updating their records as quickly. And so they're saying it's going to take them eight months to process that. And so really think about that, as sort of the crisis that it is, where somebody has actually resolved the reason for their suspension, but just because of inadequate staffing at the DMV, if that person-- the person cannot get their license for another eight months. And if they choose to drive during that time period, then they're committing an illegal act and will be punished and suffer all the consequences. And so that's something we're trying to bring attention to and try to resolve right now. BRANDON GARRETT: Do you want to speak next? ANDREA HUDSON: Oh, OK. BRANDON GARRETT: Thank you. ANDREA HUDSON: So I just want to clarify something. The North Carolina Community Bail Fund of Durham is actually under CSI, which is Community Success Initiative. It's no longer under Southern Coalition. BRANDON GARRETT: OK. ANDREA HUDSON: But I'm a prime example of driving without a driver's license. My driver's license has been suspended for over 10 years. And I did a 10-day active sentence, because I was on probation for driving on a suspended license. And the judge decided that I should do 10 days in jail. And I did my 10 days in jail. But just because my license was suspended, that didn't stop me from driving, because my car still worked and I still had to get to and from. My license isn't suspended now. It's expired, because through the program, I was able to get my own fines and fees waived, and the ones that were out of state-- because I had some that were out of state too-- those were paid off too, but I can't afford the DMV fees now. So DMV charges like $150 in order for you to be able to get your driver's license back. Once you've gotten all your fines and fees, and the reason why you're suspended done, you still have to pay DMV. So I'm driving on an expired license right now. I mean, not right now, but you know, I'm driving on an expired license. And it's unfortunate, because I was always in fear. I drove like I didn't have a driver's license. You know, like I went below the speed limit. If the light was turning yellow, I was not running it. I was going to stop. I just did so many different things to make sure that I didn't have a reason for them to stop me. But then, I got stopped for my light-- when the light on your license plate was out. I wouldn't know that was out, because I won't be back there in the dark. So I don't know it's out, but I got-- that's where I got a lot of my tickets from, is because that little light was out, or my tags had expired, or my insurance had lapsed. So those were different things that were affecting me, even though I was driving like I didn't have a driver's license. It still hindered me from being able to get a driver's license, because I got one ticket, after another ticket, after another ticket. I had like 60 tickets in Durham, not just like the ones that I got like in Charlotte, in Wake County. In Durham, I had like 60 tickets. So it's a relief now to not-- if I see the police behind me, I ain't got to pull into some random person's driveway and hop out of the car real fast, and act like, you know, I'm getting ready to knock on the door, because I don't want them to stop me, or I don't them to be leery or like, OK, why she's driving. Because when you don't have a driver's license, you really do drive nervous. And police pick up on that. And they recognize it-- OK, well, why are they doing that. And that gives them a reason to run your tag. And my husband got pulled in our vehicle because my license is expired. My license was suspended, but the car was registered to me. So they pulled him, because they were like, oh, we ran your tag, and it says that the car is registered to an unlicensed driver. But he had a license. But if I was driving, it wasn't because it was speeding or anything, the police officer just wanted to run the tag number and ran it. And I would have been-- I would've went to jail, because I was driving on a suspended license. So it's a really good program to get those things-- those fines and fees waived. Because that's all that really was hindering me from getting my license, because my license wasn't any like-- it didn't get suspended for speeding. It got suspended for not paying the cost of court, or paying the fines associated with improper equipment, and stuff like that. BRANDON GARRETT: Diana, do you want to go? DIANA POWELL: All right, well, I was one of those persons too. I drove for 10 years without my license. And the reason why is because I could not pay. And when I got stopped, and then, again, as Daniel has said, you already know what's going to happen when you go to court. You don't have the money, so I wouldn't go to court. And then that resulted in a FTA. And so, I had to go through all that processing. And I checked into it, and tried to get it, my license back. And with an attorney, it would have cost me about $10,000 to get my driver's license back. But as I continued to move-- maneuver through life, and becoming a community advocate, and the work that I was out here doing, there was one attorney, Josiah Fapojuwo, he came to me, he said, Ms. Powell, I want to help you, because you need your license in the work that you're doing. And so he did. He went-- I don't know how he did it, but he worked some magic. And I was able to go get my license. But living a life of 10 years without your driver's license, having to go pick my kids up from school, going to doctor's appointment, going to see my family, my mom, who was sick, that pressure. And it's not like, like Muffin said, it wasn't that I committed any-- I was out here doing drinking and driving or anything like that, it was-- I was just living life. And when-- every time I saw a police officer come behind me, I would, I would get nervous, sweating, and I would be praying, Lord, please don't let him pull me. And sometimes the blue lights would come on, and sometimes they would just go on around me. But the most fearful thing was when I would come up against the road blocks, because I didn't know what the outcome would be. Especially the day in time that we're living in with police officers. You don't know if that police officer had a bad day or not and how things would turn out. There were times where I would come up against a roadblock. I had my kids in the backseat. I'm begging the officer, please, I just need to get home. There was one incident, I was like a block away from my house. And because the officer was driving behind me, and he ran my tags, and he saw that my license had been suspended, and I just begged him, please. But he did not. I ended up having to go to jail, go through bond, and all this stuff. And so that is being affected by just not being able to pay. I just didn't have the money. And not that I didn't want to pay, I just didn't have it. And I realized that I was being criminalized because I was poor. I could not afford to pay that money. But today, I have my license. And the day that I went and got them, I wanted an officer to get behind me. And that's why I worked so hard and I'm so passionate about this work, to take that barrier away. Because in the community the I live in, I know that there are a lot of people that are out there that are just like me, that are driving. And I pray for them every day. And I just bring the truth and the reality to them. Let's try to fix this. Don't be like-- don't drive 10 years, like I do. And so, in Wake County, I get calls every day. It's not a day go by that I do not get a call-- Ms. Powell, what do I need to do to get my driver's license restored, I'm tired of driving in fear. And especially with police officers now, they don't know, again, what that outcome may be, especially being a black male. They're just trying to go to work. They're just trying to provide for their family, especially someone, a returning citizen from prison or jail. And so, it is so important and it's so needed. So that's why we will continue to do this campaign, to make sure that our laws are changed, that it will help our people that are out there, that are suffering every day. Thank you. BRANDON GARRETT: Thank you so much. Will, why don't you talk a little bit about what we found in this report? WILL CROZIER: So, I'll only talk a little bit, because I don't want to bore you guys with the numbers, or how you work in Excel to figure these things out. But I think we can all agree that this is a pretty important problem to address. And I think our experience with getting these data, and trying to make sense of these data, illustrate why solutions might be difficult to find. So I want to first thank Daniel, because I think you guys actually probably did most of the hard legwork in getting this, and communicating with AOC, and getting them to send you exactly what you wanted. Once we got them, it was just me at a computer figuring stuff out. But my understanding is that took you guys a couple months to get the actual numbers that you wanted, for people who had active suspensions, not people who didn't have active suspensions, which I think was one step in here-- so, everyone that didn't have an active suspension in North Carolina. So, once we get these numbers, as Brandon mentioned, it's not in the cleanest form. So it takes time to clean, to go through and figure out exactly what we're looking at. So I had to go through and eliminate all the people who had suspensions from 1920. I do eliminate all the people who had suspensions from when they were five years old. So these are dealing with typos in the way the data is entered, to clean up, to get an accurate kind of view of what we're looking at. So I think it took probably about a month, a month and a half, to finally get it formatted the way that we wanted. And I think once we do that, I think that this infographic in the report pretty clearly spells out the kind of trends that we see. And in some ways, these trends aren't surprising. So it's not surprising that we see that if you have a county that has more people in poverty, then you're more likely to have more suspensions there. But I think it's also worth highlighting that we do see kind of a interaction between race and poverty. So what some of our inferential statistics focus on is the idea that for whites above and below poverty, you're much more likely to have suspensions when you have whites below poverty. But when you look at the number of black individuals above and below poverty, that trend actually switches. So the more black individuals above poverty you have in the county, the more likely you are to have more FTAs, FTCs, or people with both. And I think that this is maybe a counter-intuitive finding, or a surprising finding, and highlights why this problem is important. Because obviously, our gut instinct on this might not be working the way we expect it to. But also shows, I think, that a solution might not be as easy as just finding the poorest people in the county and giving them money to go pay off their suspensions, which I think we've heard in a couple different ways. And then I think if you just look at the size of the problem, I think it's also kind of troubling. I mean, you have 1.2 million suspensions, which is a lot. I think that's a conservative number, because of how we dealt with the data. One thing that I think is really interesting is you can really clearly see the racial disparity if you look at the infographic. So we have the population rate in one of these bars, which is this big, long, blue bar. And then you see, in all the suspension types below that, that blue bar isn't nearly as long. And what that means is that white people are not being suspended at the same rate as they should be if it's just randomly based on the population. So a lot of the time, I think, whenever you get reports like this, people are really interested in hearing how the statistics shake out, and what's statistically significant. But I think you get a really good feel for how broad this problem is and how much work needs to go into finding these solutions, if you just look at who's being suspended across the state. BRANDON GARRETT: Thank you. Representative Morey, if you'd like to bring us all home now. MARCIA MOREY: Bring us home-- this is all about fundamental justice. And what is our justice system? Is it to tear people down or to build them up and restore? And I think we're seeing a huge shift, that we're getting smarter, we're realizing the stories that people have, and the horrible race disparities in applying the laws that we've done. So, I was a judge for 18 years. And I look back now kind of in shame of when I started. I was a judge, and I would do traffic court, and criminal court. And the DA would come to me with a plea agreement. And they would show this person has 10 driving while license revokes, and the agreement was dismissed to plea-- or dismiss, a plea to do a 45-day sentence-- 45-day sentence, for a year supervised probation. And it was all because of not coming to court or the inability to pay. And back then, driving while license revoked, no matter what it was, they were all Class 1 misdemeanors. I mean, if you had enough points, you could be going to jail for 120 days on each driving while license revoked if you had prior convictions. I think those days are gone. And I think they're gone, and the criminal justice reform is being pushed by both sides of the aisle. The Koch brothers are behind it, maybe for different reasons. I think they see how much money it costs the state and the counties to incarcerate people in the system, and we have an explosion in people that can't afford. And it's not right to impoverish people-- imprison people because of poverty. And that's what we've been seeing. There have been a lot of things the General Assembly has done in the last few years. On the good side, they made driving while license revoked, depending on why it was revoked, not a Class 1, but a Class 3 misdemeanor, at the lower end. So if it was failure to appear, failure to pay, if it was you had a speeding ticket, didn't pay that, it became a class three misdemeanor. The bad thing was, the General Assembly also said, you don't get a lawyer for these anymore. You can't get a public defender if it's a Class 3 misdemeanor. And all these people went in, and they just pled to it, not knowing, well, if you don't pay those fines and costs, or if you don't come back to court, we're going to keep adding more and more money on. If you don't come to court, not only do you have your underlying obligation, you have a $200 failure to appear fee on top of it. Or you have an order for arrest and you will be put in jail, on a secured bond, because that's what the law requires, before you can come to the judge and say, I don't have the money to pay this. We've been under the US Supreme Court order in Bearden vs Georgia the judges are obligated to find out does this defendant have the ability to pay. And the defendant has to show to the judge, no, we don't have the ability to pay, therefore you cannot incarcerate me for poverty. Are we following that? No. One thing that I think is very important, look at the vast number of people that get incarcerated because they failed to appear in court. And I'll tell you, having been a judge, and been a judge in Durham, and you would sit in that criminal courtroom, people were lined up out in the hallway because every seat was taken. You couldn't even get in the courtroom. You were there on time. And soon as that DA read your name, and your name, you didn't answer, what does the judge say? Failure to appear, order for arrest, failure to appear, order for arrest. Probably 20% of any given docket was failure to appear, order for arrest. I saw that-- I mean, a monumental problem. And people would come in five minutes late. Some judges would say, why are you late in my courtroom? The bus broke down, my daughter was in the hospital. I mean, human realities that hit everybody. No tolerance in the court system, failure to appear, order for arrest. We started, in Durham, what we call a blue sheet program. If you missed your court date, and the next day-- the next day, you can come down to court, go to the clerk, ask for a blue sheet. Write your name on it. Muffin, why weren't you in court? Illness. We set you a new court date, no failure to appear. I signed those every night. We probably reduced our jail daily population by 10%-15% every week. And the people would come back to court. We have to be much more understanding system. Let me switch hats, now I'm in the General Assembly. And I've only been there two years, but the laws we're seeing come through are cracking down harder and harder. The first thing they did, we had access to justice fee that was part of the budget. They struck it out. A million and a half dollars coming out of court costs to pay for people to get attorneys who couldn't afford it. They wiped that out. Any judge now that waives fines and costs, they are recorded, by judge, by county. How many did Judge Morey waive fines and costs. And it's kind of like a shame report. The judges that had the highest number of waivers of fines and costs for inability to pay, or do community service, instead of paying, that was sent to the General Assembly. And there was a score card-- who are the most lenient, who are the strictest judges. And that had a chilling effect on judges to be waiving these fines and costs. So we're looking at driver's license, but it applies to everything. I mean, it is a huge story. And once you get these driver's license suspensions-- and Muffin, how much will it cost to get your license back? It's an additional what-- ANDREA HUDSON: $155. MARCIA MOREY: $155, you got it? ANDREA HUDSON: Nope. MARCIA MOREY: There you go. My last comment that I'll say-- the absurdity of this-- look at what Florida just did. And it's not about driver's license, but it's about they passed a constitutional amendment by 65%. And they said any convicted felon who has served his time and off parole is eligible to vote. But what did they do last week in committees in Florida? They said, oh, we got to get some money out of this first. They have to go back and pay all their outstanding court fines, fees, anything, even though they served enough time, before they can apply to get their voter ID-- a poll tax. But it's all the same trend, the same philosophy. And so without the heroism of you all doing this important work, we would be stuck. This movement is getting the attention of all sides of the aisle. And I hope we can get some positive legislation pushed through. I'm trying to get some automatic expunctions for people with dismissed charges, with not-guilty charges. They shouldn't be on the books. It shouldn't be to the detriment of people who are coming in the system. So thank you. BRANDON GARRETT: Thank you all so much. [APPLAUSE] Can we answer some questions? Yes-- AUDIENCE: I have a question about-- I'm from Central School of Public Policy. BRANDON GARRETT: Great, thank you. AUDIENCE: And our alumni, last year, participated in the Bloomberg Foundation Project in Durham County. They initiated the project to amnesty for the people. So I would like to know how you are communicating with this initiative, and do you plan to use this best practice in your future? DANIEL BOWES: Yeah, so everything I was referring to that's happening in Durham is through the Durham Expungement and Restoration Program, which was created by the Durham Innovation Team, which is funded by Bloomberg philanthropy. So it really is sort of the best practices. And it's the most ambitious service delivery model, and really what we're trying to get other jurisdictions to do. And now that it's sort of working well in Durham, New Hanover, in Pender County, down near the coast, have said they want to do that. I'm getting interest from a lot of district attorneys around the state, who do want to take-- there's really two choices right now, which is, when we first started, what they were calling amnesty, which I don't agree with that term. But when they first started it, basically the DA's office was asking us to represent the individual who could not pay, document inability to pay, ask for the DA's consent, and then with that, go to the judge, and ask the judge to eliminate all the fees and fines. And that worked, but still, when you're dealing with a systemic issue like this and a fundamental breakdown of the system, when you're talking about hundreds of thousands of people, that's just not going to get it. And so, the transition and evolution that happened in Durham, they were trying to get to occur in other places, was now it's the DA's office motioning for relief. So we're not actually representing the individual. It's the DA's office motioning the court, saying it's the proper administration of justice to resolve this case and eliminate the suspension, based only on the type of offense and the length of the suspension. And so, that's really, again, the best model that we think, from a service delivery model, how we can address this issue. I think at the state level, we need to change policy so that the suspensions are not indefinite, that after a certain amount of time, that that's it, it ends. And I think that that would be a good sort of middle ground, where you have some coercive effect. Because when we're talking to legislators, particularly Republicans, and we say, these people-- this is not-- this is uncollectable debt. These people having indefinite suspensions, you should stop suspending licenses based on this, their response is, why would anybody pay. And so, by having it where it's a limited term suspension, for example, a year, it still has some coercive effect, but then after a year of not paying and being in suspension, it would automatically restore the license. I think that's a nice middle ground, especially if you couple it with requiring a judge at sentencing to find that the person can pay. Because the big issue we're dealing with now is, that with Bearden-- Bearden is a case that only deals with being locked up, basically losing your freedom based on non-payment of fees. But when you're dealing with the property interest as important as a driver's license-- and this is actually being litigated by the ACLU and the Southern Poverty Law Center right now-- we think that there has to be some sort of pre-deprivation determination or ability to pay. So basically, coupling those two things. And senator McKissick is preparing to introduce a bill that would do that, that would require a pre-determination-- a pre-deprivation determination of ability to pay, limit any suspension that occurred for unpaid court debt to 12 months, and then provide indigency waiver for that DMV reinstatement fee, where if somebody can't afford to pay that fine of $150, the DMV can waive that fee. BRANDON GARRETT: Thank you. Yes-- AUDIENCE: So, obviously, Bearden isn't a solution to the whole problem, like you were talking about. But you were mentioning that Bearden is being very under-enforced. Do you think that's more so due to the difficulty of someone proving their own inability to pay? Or through judges' lack of understanding of where the line is between inability and choosing not to pay. BRANDON GARRETT: There's litigation raising Bearden issues in jurisdictions and states across the country. And part of the problem-- maybe under-enforced isn't the right way to put it. There are a lot of lawmakers in local jurisdictions that have both practices and statutes, regulations, that just flagrantly violate Bearden. Bearden has been neglected, if not ignored. And what's happened is that, case after case, you've had constitutional challenges successful. Because you do have people being jailed for poverty across the country, in different contexts, whether it's probation fees, or pretrial statutes, or fines and fees resulting in consequences like we see in driver's license suspension. And there are questions about how to interpret and apply Bearden in different contexts. So obviously, the Supreme Court case that went up in Bearden wasn't about driver's license suspension. But we had a preliminary injunction granted in the neighboring state of Virginia. We have rulings out of Tennessee regarding driver's license suspension. So there's this growing body of law where people are challenging these. They've often been brought as class action, so it's not based on one particular plaintiff who could get mooted out because he or she wants to get their driver's license restored, and then they wouldn't be part of the lawsuit if they were able to scrape together the money to get it restored. So it's often class action litigation on behalf of whole groups of people. There is a case like that being brought, like Daniel mentioned, by the North Carolina ACLU and a whole coalition-- Southern Poverty Law Center-- a whole coalition of different groups. And that litigation is pending. Yeah, [INAUDIBLE] AUDIENCE: Thank you all for the work you do. It's great. I have a question, I think, for Daniel. And that is what is the legal authority for a DA to be able to bring a challenge to 70,000 revoked driver's licenses, and not, say, a public defender office or some other public state entity? DANIEL BOWES: So, I'll address two things there. The simpler one is with the FTC, the traffic offenses and FTC status, where somebody did go to court and it's about the unpaid court debt, 15(a)1363 is a statute that actually provides broad discretion to a judge to eliminate those fees, based on proper administration of justice. But what it does there is provide both the defendant and the prosecutor the ability to motion the court at any time. And so it's a very clear statute. It's been there ever since 1970s. And so that's how-- that's the basis they're using to motion a court to eliminate the fees, where there are fees. For the 70,000 pending charges, I don't know the exact statute there. But generally, district attorneys have broad discretion over which cases they will prosecute. And so, for all of those, they could basically say, age of case, which is a standard reason that the DA's will cite when they dismiss a case. But I don't know the specific-- with that one, I don't know the specific statute. But, yeah, DA's are the most powerful actor in the criminal justice system. So what we're asking them to do is use some of that power to restore individuals and not just prosecute them. BRANDON GARRETT: Yes, Sarah-- AUDIENCE: On the failure to appear issue, you mentioned this program in Durham where there's some-- you said, if they don't come one day, they can-- are there other programs to address-- because it seems to me there must be a lot of people, where they get their court notice-- I don't know how much notice they get-- I'm curious about that. And then they have a job, and if they come to court, they maybe miss their job twice, to the child care issues. And if they don't show up to work, they lose their job. If they show up to court, they can't pay anyway. They make the decision to go to work. And maybe they can't come the next day for the blue slip either, because they have to go to work. Is there anything in the court that you know of, in the administrative aspects, anyone talking about what to potentially do about that program, whether it might be evening or weekend hours for these kinds of cases? Has that come up at all. And also, I'm just curious how much notice do people get ahead of time for their court date. MARCIA MOREY: Usually, a court date, it's written on a citation. And it's typically 30 days out, if you're not arrested, for the officer's next court date. Officers usually have scheduled court dates every month, so they try and keep it like that. If you're arrested, and you get out on bond, once again, you look at the officer's next court date. So you're told, in court, or if you come in-- usually, it takes three or four court appearances before you resolve a case, even traffic court. So it's this constant wave, and flow, and flow. What we tried to look at in Durham-- and I think Wake County has done a good job, which is Raleigh-- that between a certain time, you can appear at any time, at your convenience, if it's a misdemeanor or a traffic case, from hours, like 2 to 5, in their convenience court. So if you're going to be gone on the day of your court date, just come in before, go to their convenience court, you can resolve it most of the time. I think that's a great aspect to look at. Kate Finnegan's here, and she does Orange County. You all have, you can come into a court session? AUDIENCE: We have a weekly strike order docket that is run by the clerk of court and pretrial release case manager. And everybody who comes in with a failure to appear, if it's their first time, it's automatically re-calendered that morning by the clerk. And for other people who have multiple dates, then pretrial interviews. And if they can be released to pretrial, then they are. If not, they do go up and see a judge, but they'll have counsel for that hearing. So it certainly has helped the process. MARCIA MOREY: Great question, and it's something we need to work on more and more. And every jurisdiction is so different. Many jurisdictions, if you're not there, you're not on time, you don't hit that first calendar call, you've got an order for arrest. DANIEL BOWES: Did Durham have a really good experience with notifications by text, and has that been rolled out? MARCIA MOREY: It was rolled out, and trying to-- if someone that has gotten picked up, pretrial, and they say, will you give us your cell phone number, we will text you, give you notifications the day before your court date, two hours before the court starts. And so that text notification has been helpful. A lot of people don't want to give people their text, or their cell phone numbers. But any commonsense way you can help people meet their obligation, it only helps us all. ANDREA HUDSON: Yeah, I ask that the pretrial release, that they expand that. Because they have it in the courthouse. They have a sign outside the courtroom that says, you can email or text this number to get a reminder. But if you never make it to the courthouse, you'll never see it, because it's only at the courthouse or at the jail. It's nowhere else. And I'm like, it should be out, like on a billboard somewhere, on the side of a bus, or something. So people can see, and be like, oh, yeah, I can do that. But if they never make it to the courthouse, they never get to get the text reminder. I was like even giving it to police officers, that when they give those citations, they could give them that card, but they haven't done it yet. AUDIENCE: Have you talked to the magistrates? ANDREA HUDSON: Huh? AUDIENCE: The magistrate's office. ANDREA HUDSON: It's not at the magistrate's office either. MARCIA MOREY: It could be. ANDREA HUDSON: Yeah, it could be, but they ain't done it. I've been asking. [INTERPOSING VOICES] AUDIENCE: I have a question about who the stakeholders are in support of keeping these fines and fees in place. So you mentioned that policymakers were asking why would people pay if we got rid of these fines and fees. How does the sheriff's department, or the Association of Sheriffs, how do they feel about this? How do the police feel about this issue? Because they're very heavily involved in terms of this-- sounds like it's their discretion whether to pull somebody over, whether to run somebody's tags, they have a really big role in translating the burden of this. Have you worked with them at all or know what they think? DANIEL BOWES: So the most immediate thing is that the Sheriff's retirement fund is a line item. I think it's $7 of court costs go to pay for that. So there's a very direct interest there. And that's sort of how, for a lot of actors-- I mean, there's-- I think there are 660 agencies across the state that get some money from court fees. And so there's a lot of vested interests. The only court fee I'm ever aware of being eliminated was the access to justice court fee, which was to fund Legal Aid. That's the only one that has been eliminated. Otherwise, it's continued to expand. And I think our big goal right now-- and I'm hoping to get this from data we're hopefully going to receive from AOC in the next few days, is that it's basically uncollectable debt. That after a year or two years, that individuals, if you haven't paid it off-- and I think just common sense sort of carries the day here, when you realize how coercive of a collection mechanism that is, to suspend somebody's license, that if you can't resolve that in the first year or two, then you're not going to resolve it. And so, if we can show that that's actually what's happening with the numbers, I think that will be very persuasive to all of the stakeholders. I think the biggest thing about the pending charges-- I heard a number from AOC that said there are right now three million pending cases in North Carolina, dating back to 1976. And so, it takes a lot of effort by DAs to actually dismiss those. And the Administrative Office of the Courts has been a good partner in actually giving them a tool to try to do that and dismiss them. But one of the big issues in Durham was, if the DA's office dismisses 70,000 cases and goes pretty deep on dismissing those cases, will the sheriff's department reject it, and say we're out there working hard to arrest people, and you all are just willy-nilly dismissing charges. But that was not how it played out. The sheriff's department was supportive of this. I think that more and more-- people didn't go to law school to prosecute driver while license revoked when the underlying issue was a failure to pay, people didn't go to become a police officer to do that. And so I think there is a growing consensus around this issue. And the last thing I will say is, with the General Assembly, I think you have some very strong individuals, who-- I can think of one senator, Shirley Randleman, who would really acknowledge this-- that I don't think she ever met a person-- she was a clerk of court for years-- she never met a person who she didn't think could pay court costs. And so, it was her one of her main missions at the legislature, was to put up a lot of these barriers. And so she was almost singularly responsible for the most draconian collection mechanism, which was this notice requirement that passed, that went into effect December 1st, 2017, that said any time a judge wants to waive fees, they have to give notice by first class mail to each of those agencies that may lose that revenue. And then must have a separate court session. And so that would have completely shut down fee waivers. Now, the Administrative Office of the Courts came up with sort of a workaround. But it still sent the message that they don't want you waiving fees. And so, that's how we end up with only 25,000-- out of a million cases, only 25,000 having their fees and fines waived. So I think there are a lot of stakeholders. But I think people are coming around to the idea that you need to nip this in the bud and not allow for these long-term suspensions, whether it's FTAs or FTCs, because nobody has a stake in that. BRANDON GARRETT: Yes-- AUDIENCE: You were talking about the measures in the General Assembly to get to reduce judges waiving court costs. Intuitively, it makes sense to me that waiving court costs as a means of not incarcerating people for not being able to pay would actually decrease the state budget, decrease the amount the state is paying, because incarcerating people is expensive. Is there any data that you could show that waiving someone court costs so they're not incarcerating is actually cheaper. DANIEL BOWES: So I would actually turn it over to Christina Becker, because I really focused on driver's license issues, where somebody is not losing their liberty. But Christina, in addition to litigating this case that Brandon was talking about, did a lot of court watching. So what are your thoughts on that? CHRISTINA BECKER: So we sent out [INAUDIBLE] request to all the counties in North Carolina. Not all of them responded, but with the data that we received back, it showed pretty definitively that it costs more to incarcerate people for non-payment than the money that they would be owed by that individual. AUDIENCE: It seems like it would be-- like if you take every single time they waive court costs, or not every single time, but if their waiving the costs for those kinds of things, then it's actually decreasing the cost by this amount, then that would be better. BRANDON GARRETT: Not only that, but when you talk about the net costs for all the arrests for driving with revoked licenses every year, you're talking tens, and tens, and tens of thousands of arrests, and jail time, and obviously, like we've been hearing, the fines and fees rack up-- your jail fees, and your arrest fees. But those are all fees that people can't afford to pay anyway. They couldn't afford to pay the first traffic ticket. And so it's a-- AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE] BRANDON GARRETT: It's counterproductive from a cost perspective. Obviously, we should be caring about this from a constitutional rights, human rights, and civil rights perspective, but even if all you cared about was cost benefit, it's an enormously costly system that we have turning in North Carolina. AUDIENCE: It seems like those judges that are higher on the list of waiving fees could say I'm actually saving the state money. MARCIA MOREY: And doing the right thing. AUDIENCE: Well, that's the best part, but-- BRANDON GARRETT: Have employers weighed in too? Because you figure a lot of employers need their employees to have drivers licenses for certain types of jobs. And you'd think this would be of enormous interest to employers too, to have so many people who are ineligible for so many jobs that need to be filled. That's a lot of adults that can't get jobs that aren't always easy to fill. AUDIENCE: When you talked about-- well, we've heard about some cases where people show up in court-- Representative Morey talked about the notification system in Durham, but I'm imagining that a lot of people that are getting charged don't have phones or don't want to respond to the criminal justice system, because they fear [INAUDIBLE] getting in trouble. So I wonder if you'd respond to some of the obstacles that there are to people showing up in court. ANDREA HUDSON: With the bail fund and doing basics wrap-around services with folks, a lot of the main issues of people not showing up to court is that they forgot. You're right, when they are incarcerated, and if they've been incarcerated for any length of time, they don't have access to a cell phone. I bailed a gentleman out back in February. And he doesn't have a cell phone. So I actually had to drive to his address, and knock on his door, and remind him that he had court this morning. I mean, he remembered on his own, but I wanted to make sure that he had a reminder that he had court. So that's an issue. And then people say child care. About two weeks ago, I was sitting outside the courtroom watching a young lady's kids, because the judge put her out of the courtroom, saying her kids couldn't be in the courtroom. And then, as soon as she went out the door, they called the calendar, called her name. And she's outside sitting with her kids. So they were getting ready to give her a failure to appear. And I had to tell the bailiff, that's the lady you just sent outside. You didn't get her information before you sent her outside. So that's an issue, child care, and then transportation. Because if they don't-- if they're just getting out of jail, they don't have money for a bus pass, or to pay for Uber, or a Lyft, or whatever have you. So we make sure that we provide people with transportation too, because we know that that's an issue. Because people will not show up if they have to-- if they have to walk to court, or they have to be in the rain, they're not coming. They will be like, I'll just get a failure to appear and I'll deal with it later, because I don't want to walk. Because it's either too hot, too cold, or they just don't want to walk. BRANDON GARRETT: Yes-- AUDIENCE: I think you all raised a very important question. And I'm just curious, [INAUDIBLE] tell the audience, like what is the ideal solution? What do you think the solution is? How can we fix the problem? Should we just reduce the fees? Should we create more programs? Keep people informed, maybe have a brochure, [INAUDIBLE] What are the things that we can do to [INAUDIBLE] MARCIA MOREY: I'd say one thing is, don't set people up to fail. Some communities have what they call day fines. And you find out what is your hourly wage, and you set an appropriate cost or fine based on your hourly wage. I mean, to some people, paying $180 cost of court is like dropping money for gum. For other people, it's insurmountable. It's their rent, or it's their food, or it's their child care. So to take a more reasonable approach. I used to oftentimes waive your costs and fines and do 10 hours of community service. Or if it was a hardship, they're coming out of jail, don't fine them for their $40 of jail incarceration fee. I mean, we need flexibility. Judges are not machines, they're not computers. They should be human. They should respond to the needs and what's facing these people, to stop incarcerating people because of poverty, is the bottom line. BRANDON GARRETT: Hopefully, we'll have more district attorneys like our district attorney here in Durham, that are willing to mass dismiss these old cases. But that doesn't help with the current cases. And that's why I hope Daniel and the folks at the Justice Center, and others, Representative Morey, will keep pushing for legislation to correct these problems going forward, since we're talking about just masses, tens, and tens of thousands of people added every year to this gigantic pile of people affected by this problem. And even still, if you have mass relief for tens of thousands of people, you still have to process all this to the DMV. And so it's important what the folks on this panel are doing to try to correct every single one of these horrible cases. Well, we should call it quits. It's a little after 1:30. I know we started late, so we're ending a little late. But thank you all for hearing about this. There's a lot that people can do to get involved in restoration efforts here, locally, and around the state. So if any of this moved you, I hope you come up to people afterwards. And I'm sure there are a lot of people that are interested in the help from people at Duke, including law students, or law students that are working on some of these restoration efforts, and you can too. And thank you all again for coming today. [APPLAUSE] Let's give a big hand for our panel. MARCIA MOREY: Thank you for having us.