Driver Responsibility Fees were a special bastard in who knows how many states. From the looks of it they were fairly similar in each state I could find them in, all the way down to starting in 2003. As Michigan's version was the one I am intimately familiar with, that is the one I will discuss.
Driver Responsibility Fees were additional fees on top of tickets, court costs, etc. for certain traffic offenses. They were given to all drivers within Michigan's borders including out of state visitors as well as to anyone driving with a Michigan license regardless of what state they were ticketed in. As far as I can tell, the issue of double jeopardy was side-stepped by categorizing the fees as civil fees, which in a practical sense meant that unlike tickets you couldn't be arrested for them. The guv'ment started handing them out as of October 1, 2003 and the program went through few notable changes before being scrapped altogether October 1, 2018. With the exception of fees charged for points on a license, all DRF's were charged for two years, or as I told people, broken up between two years. The following is a short list of the most common fees.
(Amounts listed are the total over two years.) *Does not include reductions for new DRFs in the law effective October 1, 2015.
$2000.00
-Driving while intoxicated
$1000.00
-Driving while impaired
-Driving with a suspended/revoked license. (Often caused by prior DRFs.)
-No Insurance under the Insurance code.
Offenders were notified via mail if they had incurred a DRF and had a 60 day grace period from the issue date to challenge, ignore or pay the DRF without any consequences. Notably they were not told by anyone else at any other step of the ticketing process they had incurred DRFs. After 60 days the balance was sent to the Collection division which started the process of suspension of the license as well as potential garnishment of wages and/or assets. However, even once in Collections people were given the opportunity to set up a payment plan on the balance.
They couldn't arrest you for them and you didn't incur interest or penalties on them. On the other hand, you couldn't "pay" them off with a little jail time either. And they still had you by the short and danglies because leaving them unpaid suspended your license. Even those with out of state licenses either had them suspended or were unable to renew as DRFs entered the national registry. As you may already guess many people ended up in a never ending circle. Fun fact, you can be thrown in jail for a short stay for driving on a suspended license.
In addition to suspending the license the state could also issue out garnishments of assets and wages. Generally speaking this was the method of last resort. People who owed would also get a notice their state tax refund was allocated toward this balance as well by default. As I explained to many people, if you owe the state money, they aren't going to issue you a refund.
This was a piss-poorly implemented idea. To start with, people had to bounce between three different branches of state government to get everything resolved. Tickets and court costs are handled through the Courts; License issues are handled EXCLUSIVELY through the Michigan Department of State (That's the DMV to some of you); DRFs were handled EXCLUSIVELY through the Department of Treasury by a 3rd party Collection agency that goes by MARCS. And none of them talked to each other.
In theory the Courts notified the MDOS of any offenses that activated a a DRF. The MDOS then relayed that information to MARCS who then sent a letter to the offender.
In reality some Courts sent the information to the MDOS the minute the ticket was issued and forgot to notify them if it was successfully challenged or dismissed. Others waited until the ticket was actually paid before notifying MDOS, which meant some people only got them years later. In addition the Courts DIDN'T TELL PEOPLE A GODDAMN THING ABOUT THE DRFs. Even if they were issued a DRF countless people were told they were all paid up and good to go once tickets and court costs were paid. (This information was only technically true due to the 60 day grace period.) In the event of a Dismissed ticket, Identity Theft or any other situation where a DRF had been charged in error, it was the Offender's responsibility to go to the Courts, request an Abstract of Removal and have that sent to the MDOS who then had to notify MARCS. Their license could've been suspended within that time if the 60 day grace period was exceeded.
Next is where MDOS fucked up. Remember the 60 day grace period? Well, if you went and asked if your license is okay within that 60 days, they'd tell you yes and just like the Courts, NOT SAY A SINGLE FUCKING WORD ABOUT THE DRFs. IF you asked them after the 60 days they directed you to MARCS and NOT TELL YOU ANY OTHER THRICE DAMNED DETAIL ABOUT YOUR LICENSE EVEN IF OTHER SHIT IS GOING ON WITH IT. True story, a man was once transferred from MARCS to the MDOS so they could get more information about their license. Upon pulling up his information and seeing DRFs he was promptly transferred back to MARCS without any information beyond that he had DRFs. In the event that someone's license was suspended due to DRFs, they would phrase that information as "MARCS suspended your license." THIS WAS A LIE THEY TOLD CONSTANTLY. MARCS had literally no control over License issues. The correct and never said way to phrase the sentence was "Due to information provided by MARCS, MDOS suspended your license." MARCS could not see if a license is valid or not.
MARCS was guilty too, albeit less so since as a third party contractor they were held more accountable to their actions than actual state employees. Their biggest sin was one inherent in any call center. High employee turnover rates = lots of new employees. This inevitably led to the quality and accuracy of information received entirely dependent on who picked up the phone. The next biggest sin was how Offender contact information was updated, which was generally manually. Remember way before when I mentioned DRF notifications were sent via mail? Well, that wasn't always sent to the correct address. Mind you, this was not always MARCS's fault, some people make themselves hard to find. Still the system was not set up to consistently and automatically update mailing addresses when new information was received by the state government through license updates, tax return addresses or post office updates. Unfortunately those sources also did not always have the best information. So even if a person called and updated their address, the system might've pulled one of them and re-update the account with an old address. MARCS also attempted to call people about their accounts. Except some genius decided their calls showed up either from a nonsense phone number or a blocked number which looked suspicious as hell. On top of that, MARCS needed people to verify their middle name, date of birth and either the last 4 digits of their Social Security Number or their entire Drivers License number before being able to say the call was about anything other than "A personal business matter with the Department of Treasury." None of this helped it sound not like a scam. This is assuming MARCS was even calling the right phone number.
The State of Michigan collected around 48 million dollars total each year from DRFs. That was a pretty penny for a state in need of funds. However, rampant public outcry combined with huge numbers of people having suspended licenses and therefore reduced employability and maybe to avoid tricky legal situations, DRFs started being slowly discontinued in 2014. Offenses dated October 1, 2015 and after had reduced DRFs, reducing more each year until March 2018 when it was announced that as of October 1, 2018 fees would be eliminated and forgiven entirely. No refunds or credits would be issued for those who had previously paid.
MARCS continues to handle other collection matters on behalf of the State of Michigan.
YMMV, especially for similar programs outside of Michigan.