By  Alabama Appleseed Center for Law & Justice

The U.S. Department of Transportation’s Selective Traffic Enforcement Program (STEP) provides additional funding to law enforcement agencies implementing programs to deter dangerous driving. As a condition, agencies must report the number of traffic stop warnings and tickets issued to the state’s STEP grant administrator. Agencies risk reduced funding if found to be not “productive” by issuing a sufficient amount of citations. Police departments in Alabama use these federal grants to drive economic sanctions by paying patrol officers overtime to be “productive” and rewarding the “most active” officers with more overtime at the end of the year; those found to be not “productive” face suspension from the program in some departments. Using municipal budgets and audits, legal records of those ticketed and arrested over court debt, and federal and state grant data, this report examines the incentives that drive policing decisions in Alabama and highlights how traffic stops–primarily regulatory and economic stops–harm low-wealth people. The report also includes personal accounts of individuals who faced court debt and provides recommendations for law enforcement, courts, and lawmakers.

Key Findings:

68 percent of law enforcement agencies statewide that received STEP funding issued more warnings to speeders than to drivers with car insurance violations —who instead received tickets.Cleburne County adds an additional $30 fee to the base of their fines for planning, designing, constructing, furnishing, equipping, and financing a county jail.Findings from two municipal budgets showed revenue from fines and fees is volatile.In 2021, the Anniston Police Department was twice as likely to issue tickets for an insurance violation than a warning when compared to those stopped for speeding.  Drivers who miss enough payments or court appearances are issued a suspended driver’s license and an order for arrest.

Recommendations:

Alabama police departments should look into how the prioritization of moving violations over equipment and regulatory stops by the Fayetteville Police Department in North Carolina has reduced traffic fatalities, injuries, and racial disparities.Courts should hold ability to pay hearings before ordering an arrest or placing a person on payment plans.Lawmakers should require publicly available reporting on all traffic stops.

Alabama Appleseed Center for Law & Justice, 2023. 36p.

By Kay Cook, Adrienne Byrt, Terese Edwards, Ashlea Coen

This report draws on the experiences of 675 single mothers who have engaged with the Australian child support system. It reveals how violence is the backdrop to women’s engagement within each stage of the child support process and the compounding impact of violence and poverty. The report makes four recommendations that would reduce the capacity of the child support system to be weaponised. Child support, despite its straightforward and important aim of transferring payments between separated households, is regarded as a complex area of policy and a ‘black box’ in which there is a lack of data on how the system operates. The system’s opacity means that parents’ experiences are largely unknown – particularly for half of the caseload who transfer payments privately. Policy and service blind spots and loopholes allow harmful behaviour perpetrated through the child support system to go undetected and unaccounted for. The lack of evidence on the harms that the system enables in turn perpetuates the myth that child support is a benign administrative process. The recommendations in this report are a direct result of the survey findings and are intended to: bring about meaningful improvements;empower women with autonomy and choice that is directed by what they want and require for their family; andcreate a system that is safe for women to engage in.

Recommendations

Delink family payments from child support by eliminating the Maintenance Income Test.Co-design family violence processes within the child support system to recognise the high rates of violence experienced by system users.Move all child support collections back into the Australian Tax Office.Make all payment debts owed to and enforced by the Commonwealth.

Hawthorn, VIC: Swinburne University of Technology, 2024. 97p.