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Show Council Calls For More Equitable Punishment The Utah Safety Council today called upon judges and justices of the peace to keep in mind the objectives of the Traffic Court conferences held last winter. This request was prompted by a survey sur-vey of traffic conviction reports leceived by the Drivers License Division of the Utah Department of Public Safety during June. Analysis of these reports reveal re-veal that while many of the convictions con-victions are fairly consistent with the schedule agreed upon at the conference, others are not. In some cases, the variance of traffic traf-fic fines is extremely wide and thereby fails completely to carry out the intent of the minimum schedule developed at the court conferences. One important purpose of the schedule is to discourage traffic law violations and their repetition repeti-tion by convicted offenders. However, How-ever, the Safety Council study indicated that the minimum penalty pen-alty is not being invoked in many instances. Such practices, the Safety Council declared, are defeating the purpose of the court conference plan. "This approach is hardly consistent con-sistent with the expressions heard at the Traffic Court conference con-ference that 'we don't want the offender's money we want him to drive safely and obey the laws,' " declared J. W. Robinson, Safety Council president. "Until the time comes when greatly improved driving habits are demonstrated by many driv-eis, driv-eis, through education, our enforcement en-forcement program must be heavily hea-vily utilized. Much can be done at all levels in this field. The responsibility re-sponsibility is a joint one between be-tween the judge and the arresting arrest-ing officer. |