Posted on 08/15/2015 9:33:07 AM PDT by conservatism_IS_compassion
A decade ago, as attorney general of South Dakota, Larry Long saw the need for a more direct approach and launched a program called “24/7 Sobriety.” I first encountered 24/7 Sobriety five years ago, and it confounded much of what I had learned in my years as an addiction-treatment professional.
On a clear South Dakota morning, I found myself in a Sioux Falls police station, waiting for more than a hundred repeat offenders to appear for court-mandated appointments. They had to blow into a breathalyzer to prove that they had not been drinking. I expected that many wouldn’t show up; I felt sure that many of those who did show up would be intoxicated—and the rest would be surly.
But every single offender trooped peacefully by, chatted briefly with a friendly officer, blew a negative test and went on his or her way. This was remarkable and new to me, particularly because it was almost absurdly simple.
Offenders in 24/7 Sobriety can drive all they want to, but they are under a court order not to drink. Every morning and evening, for an average of five months, they visit a police facility to take a breathalyzer test. Unlike most consequences imposed by the criminal justice system, the penalties for noncompliance are swift, certain and modest. Drinking results in mandatory arrest, with a night or two in jail as the typical penalty.
The results have been stunning. Since 2005, the program has administered more than 7 million breathalyzer tests to over 30,000 participants. Offenders have both showed up and passed the test at a rate of over 99%.
(Excerpt) Read more at wsj.com ...
Perhaps we should chop off a hand.
They could still get on with their lives.
People who already have a weakness do not need to have custom made excuses handed to them.
Excessive punishments that do not fit the crime do exactly that.
There’s an easy way to beat the WSJ paywall. Copy the title, then go to Google. From a Google Search page (search box doesn’t do the trick), the first link will be straight to the WSJ article. . .no nags. . .
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Also:
http://bugmenot.com/
People whose weakness threatens to kill people need to be removed from the threat. And frankly I doubt most drunk drivers are alcoholics they just make bad decisions. Bad decisions that could result in the death of others. There’s nothing excessive about the punishment, people get their licenses revoked all the time without there being any drunkenness involved. Establish that you don’t belong on the road through sufficient citations and you get your license revoked. And the punishment very well fits the crime, they proved they’re unsafe to have on the road, and now they’re not allowed on the road.
It is a puzzle.
Who said anything about disregarding anything? My response was to your claim that losing your license was house arrest. This seems like an OK idea, but not actually that great. It’s a lot of additional manpower to give the punishment, and drunk driving has only dropped by 10%. Hardly a “simple fix”, at best an interesting idea to work into the existing system. Recidivist drunk drivers though, just like any other form of recidivist bad driver, should have their licenses suspended or revoked.
“Pass a piss test, you’re fine. Fail and jail.”
The trouble with the piss test...it works great to catch those using marijuana, not so good for other street drugs.
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