Reducing Alcohol Related Crime, Accidents, and Social Harm: A Controversial Method

This does spell out a singular reality and that the super majority do not succumb to either alcohol or drug abuse even.  There are nasties that will grab you ,but a non crimianal environment make entrapment unlikely.

Self abuse is still real and demands intervention.  since the poice actually collect the data and know who has to be dealt with, lowering the treshold is easy so long as we keep it out of the criminal justice system.

folks uunable to deal with abuse need to placed in both mandated trewatment, but also in serious work environment.  I have identified woodland grooming, but altering our practise will open up plenty of alterntives..

We need to get over ourselves on this problem and simply fix it.

Reducing Alcohol Related Crime, Accidents, and Social Harm: A Controversial Method

By TerraZetzz

-Sunday, 13 August 2023, 21:50 PM

https://operationdisclosureofficial.com/2023/08/13/reducing-alcohol-related-crime-accidents-and-social-harm-a-controversial-method/

Source: Operation Disclosure Official | By Christopher B. Kuch, PhD, Guest Writer

Submitted on August 13, 2023

Reducing Alcohol Related Crime, Accidents, and Social Harm: A Controversial Method

Crime, accidents resulting in property damage and injury, along with disputes between people have always existed in our society. One common variable found to be present leading up to these occurrences and during them has been the presence of alcohol. It is not that small or moderate alcohol consumption causes these problems, but rather people consuming large amounts of alcohol are often involved with these events.

We have a paradox, in that; alcohol is a legal consumable product. Moreover, the vast majority of people that consume alcohol in moderation are not involved in these events. Furthermore, small to moderate alcohol consumption has been scientifically linked to good and preventative health by a wide range of researchers. Yet, the statistics of alcohol related robberies, traffic accidents, employee injuries absenteeism, marital problems, and neighborhood disputes clearly shows a link between abusive and heavy consumption of alcohol and these events is highly likely *1.

We have tried banning alcohol, punishing alcohol related crimes (mandatory jail time for DUI/OMVI offenders), raising the drinking age, created diversion programs after an arrest, awarded punitive damages in civil courts, and public education. While some argue that these tactics work to some degree, they all have one thing in common—they focus on corrective behaviors after the harm (except public education). What is needed is intervention before real harm occurs. We have failed in that regard with public education because the problems still occur.

Punishment and education have limited success as people who do cause problems while abusing alcohol typically don’t get help until after real harm has occurred. Our best method to reduce this harm is to prevent them from occurring.

This article focuses on identifying highly likely alcohol abusers and encouraging them into treatment or education programs before serious harm has occurred. It proposes collecting data on alcohol related behaviors not yet resulting in criminal behaviors. After it becomes apparent that an individual has been abusing alcohol, and causing the police to repeatedly be involved in their lives, the state would informally intervene and persuade these abusers into treatment and education programs.

Data Collection

When the police respond or discover a complaint, they should attempt to identify whether abusive alcohol consumption has been present. If people are not abusing alcohol, and then the police are rarely called to that location. This paper doesn’t suggest that the police collect data on law-abiding peaceful alcohol consumers, but rather noting heavy drinking which has resulted in them being called to a location to resolve a problem. Thus, it is after something wrong, harmful, or dangerous has occurred that the police should determine if abusive drinking was present.

The police routinely note on police reports that people were drinking before or during an event. It is typically contained within the report-hidden from a fast review by a reader. However, no central data bank on alcohol and complaint activity is collected. When an individual is charged with a crime the prosecutors do check previous police reports, but it is often difficult and mostly overlooked concerning previous alcohol related problems.

What is needed is a box marked “alcohol present” or a notation on the bottom of the report concerning this. The records clerk could then easily enter this into a data bank reporting the complaint number, type of complaint, date, and name of the person with their DOB and SSN. The collection of this data will be used later to identify abusers and initiate intervention. The collection of this data should only be used internally and not released to the public or media. By doing this we protect the identity and privacy of the individual. The issue of privacy and monitoring persons will be addressed in the constitutional section of this paper.

Intervention

Never is an alcohol abuser, involved in repeated contacts with the police, officially advised to seek treatment. On the other hand, officers unofficially might suggest that the person “slow down” their drinking, but typically never forward this information to health treatment authorities. The abusive alcohol consumption continues until there is a crime or physical injury. The state then gets involved after the harm. Again, we should encourage habitual abusers to seek treatment.

Hence, after X amount of contacts with the police, where abusive alcohol consumption has been reported (i.e., 5-10 incidences), the police should notify health authorities for intervention. Perhaps these authorities can routinely monitor this data and intervene. The health authorities can contact the suspected alcohol abuser and confront him/her.

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In smaller jurisdictions we might ask the AA (alcoholic anonymous) or some other chemical abuse association to send volunteers to the residence. After all police calls are public information and if don’t release medical information we protect HIPA laws.

They can leave dramatic pictures of auto accidents, statistics obout divorce and health related problems concerning alcohol abuse. They should inform the individual that if they do cause harm in the future or commit a future crime, the courts will have access to this data (including refusal to seek treatment or discuss this potential problem with them). It will be up to the courts to determine the validity of these observations and consider whether or not to use this information during sentencing. For instance, granting treatment over incarceration.

Constitutional Issues

Probably, many of my libertarian partners are on the edge of their seats reading this article. They will argue that “big brother” is being created and will be used to punish people for what they might do in the future and not for what they have done. Also the threat of labeling someone a “drunk” by non-medical authorities (the police) can lead to public ridicule, loss of jobs, and community respect. These are important issues, however, we have precedence for taking such actions already with similar situations. Let’s review and compare them.

Drunk driving is perhaps the best illustration of preventative arrests and forced intervention. It also has severe penalties such as loss of job, decreased community respect, loss of driving privileges, sometimes loss of car license plates, very high insurance rates, and frequently incarceration.

Most drunk driving charges are simple individuals driving a vehicle after drinking little to moderate amounts of alcohol. Overwhelming statistics show that most drunk driving arrests are for individuals near or just over the legal blood alcohol limit. Rarely is the driver extremely drunk (high blood alcohol content). In addition, most arrests are based on minor traffic offenses or merely weaving on the road. For example, a police officer notices a headlight out, expired license plate, failing to use a turn signal, and so forth. They then observe the car to ascertain if the driver is driving “erratically.” It is typically not because the driver is recklessly driving, but rather merely committing an often non-threatening offense.

Sobriety checkpoints are also conducted by the police where NO minor driving offense is committed, or even the most trivial minor offense—a few MPH or KPH over the speed limit. A driver is simply driving safely down the road, observing all traffic regulations, but is stopped and checked for alcohol consumption. They are tested and if over the legal limit arrested.

We could consider checking for illegal drugs in public housing as another example (Cook County, IL. USA) Arresting people for traffic offenses where no accident has occurred (running a stop sign). Also prohibiting alcohol consumption while on the job (a beer at lunch). Finally, regulating tobacco use (underage sale because of future potential health problems) and safety regulations (wearing a hard hat), and so forth. All of these examples are for future actions that MIGHT cause future harm.

Perhaps we should do away with these regulations as they are punishing behavior that has not yet occurred and might not occur. But we have weighed the potential for harm against the individual’s rights, and determined that the potential future actions are more damaging to society. Remember these actions might not ever happen.

Monitoring individuals that are potentially harmful to society is also routinely conducted by the police. They observe protestors, they pull over “suspicious vehicles”, they question “suspicious” people, they record license plate numbers, and they collect information on people by using informants. Collecting this data is supposed to only be used to prevent crime, identify criminals, and resolve conflicts.

This paper argues for informal non punitive sanctions against individuals that have shown a great propensity to create harm in the future. In fact, they have already caused the state (police agencies) to be involved in problems (neighborhood disputes, family fights, etc.). How many times must we yell “fire” before we look around for smoke?

Conclusion

The police, in smaller departments, already know who has a drinking problem. They recognize that eventually they will investigate a crime or injury caused by these individuals. The larger police departments need to organize and collect this data. They are the forward observers and are in the best position to monitor abusive drinking. They already respond to complaints involving alcohol abuse. They need only to check a box at the end of the report identifying alcohol related behaviors. This hopefully will be utilized for intervention treatment. Moreover, it will be a rich data bank for researchers involved in alcohol related harm.

If we desire to reduce alcohol related crime and injuries we must be able to identify individuals that abuse alcohol. We must get them into treatment before they hurt something or someone. We must not punish law abiding peaceful moderate drinkers. Our efforts should be on individuals that have shown, time and again, that they abuse alcohol to the point that the police must intervene. Monitoring these police contacts is the best indicator of persons that are highly likely to cause future harm.

Hopefully, some police department in conjunction with a health agency, somewhere in the states, will initiate a program similar to this proposal. We can then conduct research after a while to determine if it has a positive effect

*1 Crime in America, UCR (1994-2022), FBI, USA.

Dr. Kuch holds a PhD, MA, and MS in criminal justice. He has researched and written about a variety of police issues including drunk driving. He was a deputy sheriff in Ohio.