Decatur Municipal Court Announces Amnesty Program
Decatur Metro | August 16, 2016 | 10:21 am
The city sent along this press release this morning…
The City of Decatur Municipal Court announces the upcoming 2016 Amnesty Program. The program, which begins August 15, 2016, and goes through October 15, 2016, offers amnesty to individuals to resolve past-due traffic citations and active bench warrants for failure to appear in court. It is important to note that a failure to appear in court may have resulted in a driver’s license suspension. The goal and purpose of the Amnesty Program is to help restore as many drivers as possible to legal status to drive on Georgia roadways, and to avoid more harm to their driving history with additional charges and fines. Amnesty will save individuals money because warrant and other fees, if any, will be waived.
Individuals with outstanding violations may walk in to the City of Decatur Municipal Court, Monday through Friday from 8:00 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. from August 15, 2016 to October 15, 2016, and from 9:00 a.m. to 11:30 a.m. Saturday, October 8, 2016 to resolve their outstanding violations without facing any additional charges or costs. Any person with a failure to appear warrant, which resulted in a license suspension, who pays the fine to resolve the original citation violation, will receive documentation to submit to the Department of Drivers Services to have their driver’s license reinstated. If the original violation, such as DUI, driving on a suspended license, or no insurance, requires a mandatory court appearance, individuals should appear on Amnesty Saturday, October 8, 2016.
The court encourages anyone who believes they may have an outstanding matter in the City of Decatur Municipal Court to take advantage of the Amnesty Program. The City of Decatur Municipal Court is located at 420 W. Trinity Place, Decatur, GA, 30030. Contact us at 678-553-6655 or visit the city’s website at https://www.decaturga.com/city-government/city-departments/municipal-court/2016-amnesty-program for more information.
Photo courtesy of City of Decatur website
How nice. Wouldn’t want to hold people responsible. Will they also get a Judicial Process Participation Trophy?
Strikes me as an incentive program. Decatur’s AR from the traffic ticket business was probably getting a little too high, and this is an idea to juice collections.
This part is sort of amazing, though:
“If the original violation, such as DUI, driving on a suspended license, or no insurance, requires a mandatory court appearance, individuals should appear on Amnesty Saturday, October 8, 2016.”
Is COD saying that it is essentially going to forgive ANY of those infractions, plus associated penalties for no-showing a court date? If so, that is extraordinary.
Anyway, in a world with far too many laws, I say: Amnesty Saturday for all!
Dem, what’s AR?
Accounts Receivable.
Annual Revenue
I meant accounts receivable, which fits here b/c we’re talking about uncollected fines.
I’m really not following the logic behind this. Presumably these drivers broke a law to begin with, then didn’t show up to deal with it, and now there is an effort to help restore their driving records?
I’m hoping someone can help me understand another side to this that makes sense.
The Amnesty is a good idea. It does not erase responsibility for the underlying charge. Instead, it eliminates the penalties that arise because someone failed to appear at the hearing or timely pay the fine on those charges. It is an approach employed all over the country. Folks miss court for lots of reasons, including some reasons that are pretty good — the citation was issued to a child driver and the kid threw the citation away, never telling mom or dad about the citation; the defendant got sick; etc. The focus is on making people address the underlying charge and remove the penalties associated with their having failed to show up in court or pay the fine when their were initially supposed to do so. Getting your license suspended when the underlying charge would have resulted in a fairly minimal fine is an extreme consequence. Letting folks handle that underlying charge and removing the “pile on” penalties makes sense to me.