The Keys: Driver’s Licenses and Unlocking Communities

Can you guess what the number one legal reason people go back into the court system after release? Not drug charges. Not violent charges. Not theft.

It's Driving While License Suspended in the third degree. 

It's why we spend so much time at Underground getting folks’ driver's licenses unlocked.

Here's a story from Candice Baughman (below, right) about what happened when she tried to get hers:

One of the seven members of my OPOP team went with me to get my driver's license the first week after I got out of prison.

She'd researched everything online and felt confident we could knock it out in one trip.

I remember thinking, “That would be nice.” 

We took a number at the DOL, waited the 45 minutes, and stepped up to the window—the little cube with half-walls and a person behind the glass. That’s where the script flipped.

“No, you can’t get your license today.” A sheet slid across the counter. 

No explanation, just a “good luck” look. 

It was a driver’s abstract with six hurdles: tickets to pay, insurance to secure, ignition interlock, plus the written and driving tests. No order or sequence. No roadmap. No sense of where to even start.

For the next month and a half, my friend walked with me through the maze. 

Drive to a school. Back to the DOL. “Oh, next you need the interlock.” At the ignition interlock place: “You’ll need insurance first. And by the way, there’s a reduced-fee form at the DOL.” So, back again. 

Every step revealed another step we were never told about.

My friend kept asking, “Why wouldn’t they tell us this at the beginning? Why did they speak to you like that?”

I was used to systems like this. Curt answers. Missing instructions. The endless loop with no regard for my time, energy, or capacity.

She wasn’t used to it. She felt the sting I’d learned to expect. 

Candice is not alone.

Getting your driver's license is one of the biggest, nearly invisible "gates of Hades" that keep people in the underground after prison, in a kind of civic netherworld.

Most folks after prison want to comply with the law when they get out: get a job, drive legally, open a bank account.

But in my twenty years of walking with guys, I've been exhausted and lost trying to navigate the barriers people face when they try comply. With no one at their side, most folks like Candice just walk away at the first barrier.

Drive a borrowed car to work--to save up for these costs? Every drive to work is breaking the law. 

"You still feel like a criminal," our team member Alex told me. "Looking out for police cars. You feel like you've already gone back to your old ways."

Candice continues:

Two months later, several 7 or 8 trips to the DOL, 2 tries at the written test and nearly $10,000 later, I finally had my license.

We celebrated. I felt relief and pride.

But my friend felt something more: a paradigm shift.

She realized that the quick, respectful 45-minute renewal she’d always experienced was not everyone’s reality. For people coming home from prison, the “one stop” doesn’t exist. So many barriers interlock. And dignity is not often at the window.

I like to imagine that the next time she renews her license, she’ll pause and say, “Thank you for helping me so quickly and treating me with dignity. I wish my friend Candice had been treated the same.”

This story isn’t just about me getting to drive again. It’s about someone who loved me seeing the system as I’ve lived it, and deciding that dignity shouldn’t depend on who’s standing at the window.

-Candice Baughman

Now Candice drives all over western Washington as an Underground staff member with us for more than a year, recruiting and teaching more One Parish One Prisoner communities.

Jesus said he gave his early team "the keys" to unlock the "gates of Hades" (Matthew 16) in this divine movement.

So in a way, every friend leaving the underground past with a smile, a fresh license and dangling car keys is a kind of holy icon for us. (We included a few above.)

Thanks to everyone who either joins or donates to our work—to pay down these financial barriers, unlock gates, and equip more community members to walk alongside our resurrecting neighbors.

And thanks to Candice for sharing her story, 

Chris Hoke

Founder & Executive Director, Underground Ministries