Sobering Up

The National Association of Counties County News published an article this week that looks at the issue of balancing cost and safety when it comes to managing drunk drivers. This was a prominent topic at this week’s NACO conference in Pittsburgh. Drunk drivers are often centerstage in the jail overcrowding debate. Most jurisdictions define them [...]

Despite the fact that all 50 states have implied consent laws, which dole out punishment for refusal to take a sobriety test, refusals are still common practice in many states, and it’s letting repeat drunk drivers who are well versed in their state laws walk away from DUI convictions. Implied consent laws apply penalties to [...]

According to the Los Angeles Times, a little known California law has caused an astounding increase in the number of paroles who were taken off supervision in April. About 8,500 parolees were taken off supervision in April , more than six times the 1,300 discharged in March. Under the new law, parolees who were last [...]

We Walk Like MADD, we Race for a Cure, and we also walk for electronic monitoring. At least that’s what residents of Dexter, Maine, did June 17th when they held the second annual Amy, Coty, Monica, Memorial 5k Race/Walk to End Domestic Violence, as reported in the Bangor Daily News. Amy Lake and her two children, [...]

In May, a California judge approved a $1.2 million settlement agreement  for a drunk driving crash that injured two sisters standing on a street corner. And last March, the North Carolina mother of Laura Fortenberry, whose death in a DUI crash eventually resulted in North Carolina’s Laura’s Law, one of the nation’s toughest pieces of [...]

Recently, a Houston offender convicted of DUI after killing a young man must wear a sign created by the victim’s mother, at the original crash site, over four consecutive Saturdays as part of his sentence. The sign read, “I Killed Aaron Coy Pennywell While Driving Drunk.” This requirement was part of a two-year probated sentence, [...]

While Colorado Senate Bill 12-163 has gone largely unnoticed by mainstream media, it’s raising a good amount of debate in the state. The bill reduces the penalty for possession of 4 grams or less of certain drugs from a Class 6 Felony to a Class 1 Misdemeanor and reduces the penalty for possession of more [...]

Senate Bill 1813 titled “Moving Ahead for Progress in the 21st Century (MAP-21)”, a two-year, $109 billion plan, was passed March 14 by the U.S. Senate. The bill reauthorizes the Federal-aid highway program. Included in the bill are numerous impaired driving countermeasures for which states can receive annual incentive grants (410 grants) to adopt and implement [...]

The San Bernardino County Sun ran an article today, “Local police feel weight of early prisoner release.” The article hits on the challenges local communities are facing form the impact of AB109, California’s Public Safety Realignment program, which transitions low-level offenders out of costly state prisons to local/county supervision for monitoring and treatment. The article [...]

Yesterday, the Mayor of Houston announced plans for a new Sobering Center, where law enforcement can take public intoxication (PI) cases to sober up, instead of using officer time to book and charge PIs and jail space as a place to sleep it off. The center is set to be operational by the end of [...]