Mayor orders alcohol sobriety in London

The Mayor of London has put forward a proposal to Members of the Metropolitan Police Authority for an Alcohol Sobriety Scheme for London:

The compulsory Alcohol Sobriety Scheme is an enforcement approach providing specifi c powers for the court to order sobriety as an order for alcohol related violence offences. The compulsory alcohol requirement will involve twice daily breath testing for alcohol and failure of the test will result in immediate breach and sanctions, such as custody.

The idea of a compulsory Alcohol Sobriety Scheme for London has been inspired by a scheme that has been tried and tested in South Dakota and is currently being rolled out in other US states. In his proposal, the Mayor accepts that the crime types being envisaged are different from those in South Dakota and that the English legal system is based upon different principles. However, it is felt that the essential key principles upon which this model is based would be benefi cial for London.

The Mayor states that he is committed to making London a safer and better place to live and, in doing so, has identified the need to tackle alcohol related violence in the capital, particularly in town centres. London experiences disproportionate levels of alcohol related crime in comparison to the rest of the country. This poses a huge threat, not only to the safety of Londoners, but also to the general well-being of Londoners, particularly those who live or work in boroughs with prominent town centres. It also has huge cost implications for the MPS and the NHS, as well as borough budgets, diverting increasingly scarce resources away from priorities.

It is based around some key principles:

The judges opt to use compulsory sobriety as a sentencing option instead of choosing to incarcerate offenders

The convicted individual is required to check into a designated venue twice daily to be breathalysed for alcohol consumption If the terms of the sentence are breached, the individual is arrested, put into a police cell overnight and presented to the judge the following day.

The judge has the discretion to decide what happens to the offender, for example to incarcerate them, put them back on community sentence etc.

Individuals pay for their testing

The Mayor has tabled an amendment to the Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill for changes in the current law to enable the courts to make this order.

The possibility of an Alcohol Sobriety Scheme for London was floated in 2010 (See Alcohol Alert Winter 2010), and the Mayor has clearly decided to press ahead with the idea, despite the lukewarm or positively hostile response of some of the main alcohol control agencies and media commentators. Don Shenker, of Alcohol Concern, said the scheme would be unlikely to be a success, and the Guardian newspaper said the idea had to be a bad one because it was inspired by schemes in the United States. The newspaper described Kit Malthouse, London’s Deputy Mayor for Policing, as a ‘twerp’ for saying that an advantage of the scheme was that it would be selffunding as the offenders would have to pay for their own breath tests, and it also condemned the scheme as an infringement of civil liberties. The Guardian added that members of the Coalition government should be breath tested every time they make ‘an erratic suggestion.”

In reality, the Sobriety Scheme is probably best seen as a supplement to or variation of the Drink Banning Orders introduced by the last Labour Government. These are specific orders from a civil court imposed on an individual who has behaved in a disorderly manner or who has committed a criminal offence while under the influence of alcohol. They were introduced on 31 August 2009 and are covered by the Violent Crime Reduction Act 2006 and the Violent Crime Reduction Act 2006 (Drinking Banning Orders) (Approved Courses) Regulations 2009.

A drink banning order can be put in place to prevent an individual from entering premises that sell alcohol and entering pubs and clubs in a specifi ed area or vicinity. A drink banning order is a civil order, meaning that it does not carry criminal penalties and will be dealt with by a civil court so will not appear on an already existing criminal record or create a new criminal record. If, however, the terms are breached, then that person will have committed a criminal offence.