From breath test to jail – how the 24/7 Sobriety Program works
The rural US state of South Dakota is curbing crime with a hardline programme aimed at problem drinkers. The scheme is catching the attention of policy makers in regions as far away as Hawaii and the UK, as the BBC’s Catrin Nye reports.
Laverne Volk walks in Sioux Falls jailhouse and up to a counter where he hands over his dollar bill and blows hard into a breathalyser.
“Morning, Laverne,” he is greeted. The women behind the counter here know him. They know most of the people on the programme by name. They see them every day, twice a day.
There’s a click – the reading’s zero.
Volk, 47, walks swiftly out of the building, like most of the others who have blown into the breathalyser today.
South Dakota’s 24/7 Sobriety Program requires participants to take the twice-daily breath tests to prove they are not drinking excessively.
Volk, who has four drink-driving convictions, says he has not drunk at all since being put on the programme, but things used to be very different.
Sobriety test centres are available across South Dakota
“Alcohol’s been a problem all my life. I was mostly drinking on the weekends, about half a case – sometimes on Sundays and sometimes during the week,” he says.
He adds: “I know I had a problem. But now I’m sober. It [the 24/7 Sobriety Program] is a pain, but it works.”
Other participants coming in to “blow” are less positive.
Andres Torres, 30, was also convicted of driving under the influence. Now he can only ride his motorbike to work and to the test centre.
He says being tested twice a day is completely invasive.
“The program is a huge inconvenience, and I really don’t think it’s very effective in what it’s trying to achieve, especially for the people who have the most serious alcohol problems,” he says.
24/7 Sobriety Program
Between Jan 2005 and March 2010
14,647 participants2,896,353 total tests2,875,982 passed tests20,372 failed tests
“People with a serious problem come in, they blow hot [positive], they can’t complete the programme and they just end up back in jail.”
Torres has already been to prison for his driving offence. He argues he has done his time and should not still be paying for it.
The testing process here in Sioux Falls is swift.
One woman enters the building in full Lycra – fitting the test into her morning jog.
But the programme does limit how far you can travel from test centres, which are located all across the state.
The tests can be used as a sentence, as a pre-trial condition or imposed upon parents as a condition of having children returned to a household.
In Sioux Falls, the largest city in South Dakota, participants must show up for their first test of the day between 0600 and 0900 and for their second between 1800 and 2100.
“I was a frustrated local prosecutor because alcohol was involved in every crime, so the sheriff and I set upon this plan, frankly out of desperation”
Larry Long South Dakota judge
They pay their dollar to take a breath test, and if it is clear of alcohol they leave.
If, however, the test is positive, the person is given 15 minutes to sit down and retest – and another positive reading leads to more severe consequences.
Lt Scot Pfeiffer, supervising on the day the BBC visits, says that of the more than 350 people who come each day to take the test, on average up to three will fail or not show up.
He says that someone can drink a small amount and still get a clean reading – a failure signals that the participant has been drinking to excess.
That failure causes the participant immediately be taken to the jail’s holding area, put in prison “stripes” and placed in front of a judge the same day.
Depending on a person’s record he or she may get 24 hours, 48 hours or possibly a week in prison.
The theory is that the short, sharp consequences of failing the test give an offender a taste of life inside – but prisons are not made crowded for long periods of time.
Judge Larry Long first came up with the programme in the early 1980s, when he was a prosecutor in tiny Bennett County in South Dakota.
Judge Long says he was seeing the same people day in, day out, and prison was not stopping their drinking.
If an individual fails one of the state’s sobriety tests, he or she could face up to a week’s stay in prison
“I was a frustrated local prosecutor because alcohol was involved in every crime, so the sheriff and I set upon this plan, frankly out of desperation,” he says.
“These people were coming through the system time and again for the same reason. They had had too much to drink, and they had gone out and driven a car or beaten on their wives. It was a lifestyle and we knew if we could get them separated from alcohol we could save them,” Mr Long says.
The pilot started and has grown from there.
It was in 2007 that South Dakota’s legislature unanimously created the 24/7 Sobriety Program, giving authority to the Department of Corrections and the Board of Pardons and Paroles to use it.
Officials also say additional help is available for people with more serious alcohol problems.
They cite statistics showing an improvement in road safety and a drop in South Dakota’s prison populations since the programme’s inception.
Marty Jackley, attorney general for South Dakota, says the programme’s success is down to removing the problem at its source.
The 24/7 Sobriety Program is being piloted in other places
“I think it could work very well in other places,” Mr Jackley says.
“Whether it’s Montana or North Dakota or any place seeing the benefits, it’s the underlying concept – if you have an individual that’s getting into trouble with the law because of alcohol, you have to deal with the addiction.
“It’s cost effective, and I don’t think you’re infringing on people’s rights when the alternative is to put them in jail.”
The programme has already been introduced in North Dakota and is being piloted in Montana.
Policy makers in London and Hawaii are looking at how it could be adapted to deal with their problems.
Officials from Hawaii have recently spent time in South Dakota looking at how the programme works.
In London, the mayor’s office hopes the 24/7 Sobriety Program can be adapted for other drink-related crime, notably drunken violence.
In July 2010, the UK Home Office reported that the total cost of alcohol-related crime and disorder to the UK taxpayer was estimated to be between £8bn ($13bn) and £13bn ($21bn) per year.
And in 2009, almost one million violent crimes were alcohol related, with a fifth of all violent incidents taking place in or around a public house or nightclub.
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
No business will be too small to offer a pension to its workers
Every UK business should be made to offer a company pension scheme from 2012, according to a government review.
The BBC has learned the review, due on Wednesday, will recommend that workers be automatically enrolled into occupational schemes, no matter how small the company.
Government estimates show around seven million people are currently not saving enough for retirement.
Critics say the plan will damage small firms and make them uncompetitive.
The principle of automatic enrolment of employees into pension schemes was established in the Pensions Act (2008), which set out reforms designed to make saving for retirement the norm among employees.
“ The cost and time spent on administrative work will damage micro firms”
John Walker FSB
The key feature was that all employers should provide an adequate pension scheme for their eligible employees – typically those aged 22 or more and earning at least £5,035 a year.
If such a scheme was not provided, then the staff would have to be automatically enrolled in the forthcoming new state scheme, known as the National Employment Savings Trust (NEST).
Employers would also be forced to make a minimum level of contributions.
However, in June the coalition government announced a consultation and review of the precise scope of automatic enrolment.
The review, carried out for the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP), recommends allowing employers three months grace before staff are automatically enrolled, to ease the burden on companies employing large numbers of temporary workers.
The report says if a member of staff chooses to sign up before the three month period elapses, companies will be forced to make contributions then as well.
This is to make sure people who often change jobs can build up a pension pot for their retirement.
The review also recommends automatic enrolment should only apply when a person earns more than £7,500, considerably higher than the previously proposed level of £5,035.
Companies that do not have an occupational scheme, and choose not to set up one for themselves, will be compelled to use the NEST scheme.
This has been set up by the government to cater for low-to-moderate earners and their employers.
John Walker, national chairman of the Federation of Small Businesses (FSB), said the revised plan would hit the smallest firms hardest.
“The FSB has constantly warned that the cost and time spent on administrative work will damage micro firms – those with 10 employees or less – and that the pension schemes set up by government do not meet their needs,” he said.
Business lobby group the CBI and the TUC both support small businesses being included in the scheme, saying it will help target those least likely to save for retirement.
David Ferris, senior consultant at the pension advisers Punter Southall, said including small businesses would only work if the process was kept simple.
“It will come down to the success of NEST,” he said.
“Can that organisation make hundreds of thousands of companies interact successfully with their online scheme by making it straightforward?”
The coalition government will now have to make a final decision on the review’s recommendations.
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
Deaths from smoking-related diseases across England have fallen, the survey found
One in three pregnant women in Blackpool smoke, latest research has shown.
The survey found 33% of women in the Lancashire resort smoked while they were pregnant in 2008/09, compared with just 4% in Richmond, Surrey.
The Association of Public Health Observatories (APHO) figures showed nearly 15% of women who gave birth across England that year smoked.
Overall, deaths from smoking-related diseases across England have fallen.
The charity’s survey, commissioned by the Department of Health, found tobacco still causes more significant illness and deaths across the North West than in most other parts of the country.
But the North West also has some of the highest quit rates in the country and downward trends for the main smoking-related illnesses including heart disease, cancer and stroke.
Related stories
Despite having the highest number of pregnant smokers in the country, APHO found those levels were falling due to continued investment in support for families.
The survey found there were 207 smoking related deaths per 100,000 people aged 35 and over in England during 2006-08.
This was down from 216 deaths per 100,000 in 2004-06.
Smoking related deaths from lung cancer were highest in Middlesbrough, with the illness claiming 71 victims per 100,000 in 2006-08.
This compared to 19 per 100,000 smokers dying from lung cancer in Guildford in the same period.
London Health Observatory director Dr Bobbie Jacobson said: “The significant proportion of women who reported smoking in pregnancy is a sign of our need to redouble our preventative efforts in primary and maternity care.”
Speaking about all the findings, she said: “There is clearly a mix of good and bad news.
“The overall picture of falling death rates is encouraging and shows what can be achieved over time through clear plans to tackle the harm from smoking.”
But she added: “The north/south inequalities remain a stark reminder that the biggest burden of smoking-related ill health still falls on our poorest communities.”
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
The 17 different rare earths are found in everything from magnets to hybrid cars and computer monitors
The US and the EU have warned that a shortage of rare earth metals from China could harm their economies.
Officials and industrialists in Washington and Berlin said a lack of the minerals, 90% of which come from China, would have severe repercussions.
The metals are essential for making many hi-tech products and some are used by the US weapons industry.
Related stories
China says it is cutting production to protect the environment and preserve its own supply.
It has denied it is using its near-monopoly improperly and says there will not be drastic cuts in exports.
Rare earth metals are scarce minerals that have particular properties, such as being magnetic or shining in low light.
This makes them particularly useful in some new technologies, such as solar panels or electric cars or light-weight batteries.
German companies have lobbied the government to say that they are now finding it hard to get hold of these essential minerals, because China produces virtually all of them.
German economy minister Rainer Bruederle said his country was being severely affected.
The concerns about a monopoly are now being echoed in Washington, where the Department of Energy has said firms are worried about shortages. One talked of a “supply crunch”.
In the US, efforts are being made to increase production, but this cannot be done in the near future.
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
A heterosexual couple are launching a legal bid to become civil partners. What’s their problem with getting married?
Just like any young lovers, Tom Freeman and Katherine Doyle are thinking about their future.
After five years together, the 26-year-olds are planning their life ahead and, naturally enough, they want to formalise their relationship.
For many straight couples in their position, the next steps would be obvious: get engaged, send out the invites to all their friends and family, put in the order for the champagne, then head down to the church or register office for a wedding.
But Katherine and Tom aren’t most couples.
They don’t want to get married. But they still want to make a lifetime commitment to each other. And they’d like greater legal and financial security than that offered by simply cohabiting.
So what’s the solution? It’s obvious, really: a civil partnership.
There’s only one snag. Under the Civil Partnerships Act 2004, such arrangements are restricted to couples of the same sex.
This, however, is not enough to deter Tom and Katherine. So on Tuesday 9 November, they will head to their local town hall in Islington, north London, and file a civil partnership application.
It is part of a legal bid spearheaded by the activist Peter Tatchell called the Equal Love campaign, which aims to redress the imbalance between heterosexual and homosexual partnership rights.
How to propose a civil partnership
Simon Fanshawe, author of The Done Thing: Negotiating the Minefield of Modern Manners
Civil partnerships are a bit like second marriages: the couples have usually lived together beforehand, so when one is proposed it’s often a case of, “Do you think we should?” “Oh, OK then.”
But it’s perfectly acceptable to say, “Will you marry me?” People talk about weddings when they mean civil partnership ceremonies and refer to their husbands or their wives. It’s part of the culture now.
I support gay marriage, and while civil partnerships were right for their time I don’t see the point of extending them to heterosexuals.
Then again, I suppose you could always get down on one knee and ask: “Do you want to merge our tax affairs?”
Katherine and Tom will be one of four straight couples who will apply for civil partnerships. As part of the same process, four sets of same-sex couples will attempt to sign up for marriages.
Working on the assumption that all eight will have their bids rejected – an earlier attempt by Katherine and Tom to register for a partnership failed in 2009 – Equal Love plans to launch a legal challenge on the basis of human rights legislation.
Whatever your views on the issue, the argument that gay and lesbians should be allowed to marry is straightforward enough to follow. Civil partnerships, which came into force in 2005, mostly give same-sex couples the same legal rights as married couples, but some campaigners believe the arrangement lacks the status enjoyed by marriage.
It is a viewpoint that has gained cross-party backing, having become official Liberal Democrat party policy and received the backing of Labour leader Ed Miliband and Conservative Mayor of London Boris Johnson.
But why would a straight couple demand the right to be joined in a civil partnership that so many in the gay rights lobby believe is inadequate?
Both Tom and Katherine explain that their primary reason for not getting married is that they do not want to be part of an institution from which gay and lesbian people are excluded.
But they say that, even were the law to change to allow same-sex marriage, they would still choose to having nothing to do with it.
While many young women dream of the day they walk down the aisle as a bride, Katherine, a postgraduate student, is not one of them.
“For Tom and I, the role of the husband and the role of a wife seem very strict and that’s not for us,” she says, arguing that such categories derive from an era when women were subservient to men. “In our day-to-day life, we feel like civil partners, not a married couple.
The French version of civil partnerships have proved popular with straight and gay couples alike
“There’s supposed to be something transformative about marriage, but a wedding wouldn’t change our relationship.”
Tom, a civil servant, agrees. “We don’t feel like a husband and wife, we feel like partners,” he says.
The couple argue they are discriminated against because heterosexuals who eschew matrimony receive none of the tax breaks enjoyed by either married couples or civil partners.
Indeed, Peter Tatchell argues that current civil partnership arrangements are “heterophobic” on the same terms that he believes the existing system of marriage is homophobic.
The system, he insists, is one of romantic “apartheid” which only serves to divide people, and he believes even civil marriages cannot accommodate those who want to shake off the institution’s historical association with property rights.
“Some [straight] women don’t like the whole history and baggage that goes with marriage so they find civil partnerships attractive,” he says.
“This isn’t a gay rights campaign – it’s about equality for everyone.”
“With marriage, it’s been shaped by a the fact that it’s usually been between a man and a woman”
Mark Vernon Writer and philosopher
If the campaign sounds novel to British ears, it would be considered retrograde in France, where the equivalent of civil partnerships have been available to gay and straight couples alike since 1999.
In 2009, some 95% of those taking up the pacte civil de solidarite (Pacs) were heterosexual.
And while the number of straight French couples opting for Pacs has risen, the number of marriages has shrunk, to the point that there are now two couples entering into a Pacs for every three getting married.
It is a statistic that Equal Love supporters would use to assert that many heterosexuals want the legal security of a civic union without the historical and cultural baggage of marriage.
But by the same token, advocates of traditional family values could use the same figures as proof that straight civil partnerships undermine married life as an institution.
Not all opposition to Tatchell’s campaign comes from such quarters, however.
Writer and philosopher Mark Vernon is himself in a civil partnership, but believes that it is correct that the law recognises the differences between gay and straight relationships.
The author of The Meaning of Friendship, he argues that heterosexual couples, whether they like it or not, cannot escape the gender roles framed by centuries of marriage. Likewise, he says gay couples should embrace the opportunity to define civil partnerships on their own terms.
“When you get into an institution you buy into a whole history, like it or not, and with marriage it’s been shaped by a the fact that it’s usually been between a man and a woman,” he says.
“The idea that by having a civil partnership rather than a marriage you can circumvent that is self-deluding. I would have thought that you’d be better off reshaping the institution of marriage from within.”
Whether one supports their campaign or otherwise, surely everyone would raise a glass to Katherine and Tom as they prepare for their life together. For richer or for poorer, for better or for worse.
Well done to them. My fiance and I are planning our (heterosexual) civil wedding. It makes me feel angry that the register office has signs and plaques up everywhere stating that “Marriage, according to the law of this country, is the union of one man, with one woman” and apparently that wording is also a legal and unalterable part of the ceremony. I do not understand how that sort of discrimination can be legal, and I wish I’d had the courage to make an issue of it.
Mary, Warwickshire
My partner of five years and I have often had this debate – we want a (straight) civil partnership, but it is not permissible. If there is no legal difference between a marriage and a partnership (other than straight/gay), why not unify the process, and declare at the time of the union that “We want this to be known as a Marriage/Civil Partnership”. The legal commitment is the same, why shouldn’t gay couples marry, and why shouldn’t straight couples form a legal partnership?
Andy Mac, Newcastle
I think that this is good. Marriage and Civil Partnerships should be open to any couple who wants them. We need complete equality for all. I am married. I don’t see marriage as an institution but as a declaration of love and committment between my husband and I. I am proud to be able to call my husband by that term and I feel that the term partner is too business-like and less romantic. To each their own though.
Emma, Edinburgh
While there is of course nothing wrong with people being in same-sex relationships or civil partnerships, I firmly believe that you can’t equate it to marriage. Marriage is a bond between two individuals of opposing sexes that have committed to spend the rest of their lives together, and a key part of marriage is procreation; passing on your genes. That isn’t biologically possible in same-sex relationships, so can’t possibly be thought of in the same way. It all seems very much like some individuals have a serious inferiority complex about their sexuality, and it’s a shame. And, also, marriage is NOT a system whereby the woman is subservient, and to suggest such a thing is completely absurd and really quite sexist.
Matthew Kimberley, Staffs
Easy solution. 1. Abolish register office marriages. 2. Limit marriage to those officiated by recognised religious bodies. 3. Everyone else – of whatever inclination- can enter into civil partnerships at register offices.
Jeffrey, Sheffield
As cohabitees of 26 years, I cannot sign for her medical treatment or her children’s when they were young as we’re not next of kin. We can’t access each other’s bank affairs should one of us die, automatically inherit property, have a transferable inheritance tax allowance etc etc. We can however have each others affairs taken into account for benefit claims and the like. But if we we enter into a quasi-religious contract, which neither of us are believe in, then that’ll do fine. So we seem to count as a second class family.
Ken MacIver, Brackley
What an absolutely disgraceful waste of tax payers’ money. It’s about time the government legislated to prevent trivial cases like this being brought under Human Rights Legislation, the courts have much more important business to deal with.
John McKee, Leeds
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