Government at its finest. In Oregon, Reason Magazine reveals, a man was jailed for almost a year because of a clerical error on the Department of Motor Vehicle’s part. The guy was totally innocent.
The DMV eventually got around to fixing the whole thing, but they shrugged off the sluggishness saying “it wasn’t at a high enough level to understand the emergency” or that it was a problem that needed to be addressed. Happens to the best of us.
Nicholas Chapelle was hauled off to prison after driving with a suspended license. The funny thing is, his license wasn’t actually suspended. Chapelle isn’t alone. 3,000 licenses have incorrectly been labeled as “indefinitely suspended”. So far, there’ve been at least five wrongful arrests because of this error.
This stems from the expected re-instatement of licenses for those previously serving time. Once their stint is jail is done, their license is automatically no longer considered suspended. Prison officials are supposed to be tasked with informing former criminals that they need to file the paperwork to get the DMV to note the lifted suspension. But prison officials haven’t’ been able to get information from the DMV as to who can have their license suspension removed. Therefore, that entire process was skipped over, and now 3,000 Oregonians are effected due to their negligence.
Worst of all, in an effort to help those previously serving in jail to get back on their feet, a six figure tax some is allocated to create an accurate and speedy database of those who are approved to get their suspension lifted.
Oregon has some of the highest state taxes in the nation. Nice to see they’re getting put to good use.
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