Bureaucrats and Ankle Bracelets

Sometimes, stupidity exists to the point that someone has to say “enough.” There needs to be a collective “DUH!” addressed to the perpetrator, and those who have authority over him or her, and an immediate change needs to occur.

For some strange reason, these situations tend to happen in a government setting more than others. One recent one involves the rampant number of injuries and deaths that occur as a result of driving while either under the influence or impaired by alcohol.

I think it’s a given that people have been driving drunk as long as they’ve been driving. Back when there was a horse or a mule involved, at least one of the mammals involved usually had enough common sense to keep it between the ditches. Since the advent of the automobile, however, that’s no longer true.

There have been lots of attempts to address the problem. Separate courts have been set up to deal with offenders. All kinds of treatment programs have been tried with varying degrees of success. Other countries have gone a bit more draconian where sentences of offenders involve hard labor, life imprisonment or the death penalty.

Harsh, but there’s not much recidivism.

We can’t seem to get a handle on it in the US, but there’s one nifty little tool that came along a few years ago that is universally hailed as a great thing – except in North Carolina, where it’s banned.

It’s this stylish little piece of jewelry that attaches to a person’s ankle. It automatically reads their perspiration to tell whether or not they’ve been drinking, then the information is uploaded daily to a computer and reported to a person’s parole officer.

Pretty neat, huh? One of the conditions of most sentences for DUI (Driving Under the Influence) or DWI (Driving While Impaired) is that the defendant not drink during the period of probation. This tells if they’ve been breaking the rules and is cheap to monitor since the information goes over the internet and is automatic.

Makes sense, right? After all, these people have shown at least a lapse in judgment that endangers not only themselves but the public at large. At worst, they have a severe substance abuse problem they can’t control without some pretty hefty coercion.

Why can’t we use it here? Because ONE BUREAUCRAT at the state level decided he didn’t like the company’s sales tactics.

It seems the company that developed these gizmos did what any other company hoping to grow their market would do; they sent out sales reps into the market. In this particular case, the market happened to be the courthouses, talking to judges and the people that would actually sentence these people, and the company got the permission of the Chief Justice of the NC Supreme Court before they contacted anyone.

This apparently stepped on the turf of the Senior Deputy Director of the North Carolina Administrative Office of the Courts (AOC). One has to wonder how insecure this person is to have gotten his boxers wadded tightly enough to deny the entire State of North Carolina the opportunity to use this tool, just because someone affronted the dignity of his person and office.

So in 2007 he wrote a two page memo that challenged the technology used and prohibited the use of this little device. He doesn’t seem to have any special qualifications that would let him challenge the technology, though. He just didn't like it.

He was joined by the (then) head of the North Carolina State Probation System, whose turf was also apparently encroached, so he wrote a marginally-literate email in 2006 that essentially said he wouldn’t cooperate. That person was eventually given the opportunity to retire or be fired once the Governor discovered that he’d been slacking off in his duties and not monitoring probationers for years. He’s now hopefully enjoying activities in his retirement that require neither accurate spelling nor sentence structure.

49 other states have approved the use of ankle bracelets, finding the technology adequate and the tools useful. North Carolina stands alone in opposition.

If you sift through the news reports in today’s Charlotte Observer --http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2010/08/13/1619097/dwi-courts-cant-use-key-tool.html -- you find out that the Senior Deputy Director of the NC Administrative Office of the Courts simply bullied everyone else into giving up on using these. After all, AOC controls money to the counties to operate the court system.

This gadget is a pricey piece of bling. It costs $12.00 a day for monitoring, plus presumably some charge for the do-hickey and clipping it onto the prisoner’s ankle. That’s $372.00 a month, which could well be a substantial chunk of change for some criminals, although one has to wonder if there isn’t a bit of cash freed up because they’re no longer supposed to be buying liquor.

There'd still be money for cigarettes, I bet.

Without going into a deep economic analysis of the cost of injuries sustained by innocent people, time lost from work attending court hearings, physical therapy, and just the general grief suffered when someone you love has to be cut out of their car by rescuers, a trip out for a gallon of milk turned disastrous by someone who has overindulged, I’m still betting that this is far, far less than the cost of keeping that person in jail.

If the rest of the economy would have a return on investment of even half that, we'd no longer be in a Recession.

Let's remember too that this is punishment! It’s supposed to hurt! There’s a two-fold purpose here. First, to make sure that this person isn’t boozing it up because they’ve shown they have a problem and as a result, they cannot use any alcohol during the period of their sentence in hopes that they’ll either learn to control it or will get over the addiction.

The argument about it costing too much is ridiculous, anyhow, because the Courts routinely do things to defendants that are financially devastating. Vehicles (including cars, jet skis, airplanes and any number of other conveyances) are seized and sold if you’re driving under the influence and it’s not the first time you’ve been caught. If you use a house to manufacture drugs, that can be seized and sold.

If you have to have a “blow-n-go” (i.e. “Ignition interlock device”) installed on your car because you were caught driving with too much alcohol in your blood, you’re going to pay close to a grand to get it put in and then a monthly fee to have it monitored and the information uploaded to the probation folks.

To even consider the cost to the defendant is ludicrous. The state ought to pick up the cost up front, use the monitors and then make that one of the costs that the defendants have to reimburse, just like their fines, parole fees and other charges.  They do it all the time; this is a no-brainer for most of us, from a fiscal perspective.

The other argument, apparently, is that the ankle bracelet won’t immediately stop someone from driving drunk. Now, the alternative – what they have used for years and what they still use – is to have probation officers go find the defendants and randomly make them blow into a breathalyzer a few times a week.

How hard you think it is to game that system??

If there were ever an example of a bureaucrat run amok, this is it. My hope is that the Director of the NC Administrative Office of Courts has simply been asleep at the wheel for a few years and will be having a “come to Jesus” meeting with the Senior Deputy Director this morning after he reads the paper.  I'd put email addresses here for both of them so anyone could offer an opinion, but they've conveniently hidden those on the website so they're not readily available.

Alcohol abuse, and especially drunk driving is a major problem in our country. It needs to be addressed. To refuse to implement a very useful and valid tool, even if it’s not perfect, just because some muckety-muck got offended at how it was marketed is ludicrous.

We deserve better from our government administrators.