Vehicle immobilization has long been an effective tool to collect unpaid citations from those who ignore and put off resolving their debt to local governments. Typically, immobilization, or as most people know it, “booting,” is reserved for repeat violators, also known as scofflaws, who have multiple outstanding citations months, or years old.

Unpaid Citation Revenue Balances Commonly Run in the Millions of Dollars Range for Even Smaller Municipalities

One of the challenges of locating scofflaw vehicles is that municipalities try their darndest to get the scofflaw to pay before they resort to booting.  A typical scofflaw will receive no less than three letters in the mail before they can even be “boot eligible.”  The letter process can take months to run its course.  The passing of time is no friend to a booting program.

The more time that passes, the more difficult it is to find a scofflaw.  The likelihood of locating a scofflaw decreases significantly after a year as people move out of the city or the vehicle is sold.