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Tuesday, August 8, 2017

Focusing on the Booze

An excerpt from the Washington Post -

Most drunken-driving programs focus on driving. This one worked because it focused on booze.
By Keith Humphreys

“24/7 Sobriety” was invented more than a decade ago in South Dakota by an innovative county prosecutor (and future state attorney general) named Larry Long. Long concluded that the best use of the power of the criminal justice system was to attack the role of alcohol in offenders’ lives directly by mandating them to abstain. Many judges across the country order abstinence as part of parole or probation, but Long decided to actually enforce it. Offenders’ drinking was monitored every single day, typically by in-person breath tests in the morning and evening. In contrast to the typically slow and unpredictable ways of the criminal justice system, anyone caught drinking faced a 100 percent chance of arrest and an immediate consequence — typically 12 to 36 hours in jail.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/08/07/most-drunk-driving-programs-focus-on-driving-this-one-worked-because-it-focused-on-booze/?utm_term=.aec716532e5b&wpisrc=nl_rainbow&wpmm=1

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