England Starts Fingerprinting Drinkers

dptalia writes "In an effort to reduce alcohol related violence, England is rolling out mandatory fingerprinting of all pub patrons. If a pub owner refuses to comply with the new system, and fails to show 'considerable' reductions in alcohol-related crimes, they will lose their license. Supposedly the town that piloted this program had a 48% reduction in alcohol-related crime." From the article: "Offenders can be banned from one pub or all of them for a specified time - usually a period of months - by a committee of landlords and police called Pub Watch. Their offenses are recorded against their names in the fingerprint system. Bradburn noted the system had a 'psychological effect' on offenders."

Comments

Re:Ummm... not

[wrook]

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-2033473, 00.html

As much as I agree with your "need to get verification" stance, it didn't take me more than 30 seconds to find this. And I believe the Times should be considered a reliable news source.

Re:Ummm... not

[ocelotbob]

here ya go. 15 seconds of googling.

Re:Applies to only drinkers?

[cowbutt]

So for the English out there, who does this law really apply to? I've been to London a few times and enjoy a good pub lunch, without drinking - am I still going to be printed in that case?

Probably not, unless you happen to pick a pub which is notorious for alcohol-fuelled violence in the evenings. Usually, such establishments have a negative correlation with serving decent food and beer, so I doubt either of us will be personally affected by this, at least initially. Definitely something to keep an eye on, though.

Answer: slashdot headline, misleading as usual :-)

[fantomas]

Answer: there is no law that requires you to be finger printed if you want a pint. There is no government roll out of fingerprint checking before you can have a pint.

Slashdot is enjoying a nice hyped up headline, egged on by The Reg singing it up. Major towns and cities? one rural backwater population 40,000. We've had bigger towns voting for monkeys as their town mayor (Hull, go have a read). Have a sip of that nice warm beer and calm down :-)

Reading TFA, one town has trialed a system. Little Britain jokes aside, we have more than half a dozen towns here :-)

So we do have a law, the "Crime and Disorder Act (1998)" which requires town councils to reduce drunken disorder. One district council (in Yeovil, a nice little country place in rural Somerset, population 40,000) has decided the way to do this is to have fingerprint recognition, it's putting the pressure on pubs to install this system. It's using money from a government fund "Safer, Stronger Communities" through the Department for Communities and Local Government's Local Area Agreements. The government funder have already noted that its a local decision, not theirs, on how local town councils spend the money.

This "rollout" the article speaks of consists of ten pubs in a neighbouring small town considering it. Trust me, we have more than eleven pubs in the UK...

A couple of police forces elsewhere have "shown an interest" which suggests to me somebody's phoned up to ask how its doing. The district council representative (who you'd expect to be positive and not say "well we really wasted our taxpayers money on that one") has said the Home Office is considering trials in more towns (what does this mean? 5 pubs in each place?) - but the Home Office later in the article denies it decides how the budget is spent.

Bouncers do ask for ID for people they think are underage (under 18) in some pubs. But only those folks. I was amused when in the USA to be with a silver haired retired friend who was asked for his ID as well. I think he was quite amused and pleased that they were checking him in case he was under 21....

Re:Europeans, Canadians are exempt.

[Heraklit]

Not true. US immigration requires fingerprint and photograph also from all visitors from the visa waiver countries (eg all western europe, the 27 countries in the parent post). The China Daily article is clearly incorrect.
 
  (As a frequent US traveller and German citizen I can confirm this firsthand.)

Re:How Long Before They Tie This Into Insurance DB

[unapersson]

The data protection act should in theory stop abuses like that, data collected is not allowed to be used for any reason other than for what it is collected. And you have to be upfront about what the data will be used for.

it isn't true so we have not gone apeshit.

[Anonymous Coward]

yes, this would cause a bit of a fuss, if it were true. The first I have heard about this is on Slashdot. The landlord of my local has not heard about it. Publicans have a lot of freedom over who they let in or don't let in to their public house. If a publican wants to install fingerprint scanners to control access then they would have the freedom to do that. Customers have the freedom not to go to that pub if they don't like it. Publicans also have the freedom to install bouncers who won't let in people they don't like the look of. Local authorities (not national government) who make licensing decisions have the freedom to be influenced in their decision about issuing/renewing a licence by looking at how the publican maintains an atmosphere of responsible drinking. I think this will fail for practical reasons (you will need a bouncer to stand by the machine - if you have a bouncer just let them make the decision, if you don't have a bouncer then people can walk past the machine). People who are registered drinkers can still arrive drunk, and it is illegal to serve alcohol to drunks. There is no way that this will be installed in country pubs.

PA liquor laws

[Kadin2048]

It's been a while, but IIRC in Pennsylvania it's not that you can't buy beer in less than a case, it's just that you have to go to a different store. They have "Beer Stores," which sell beer by the case and only by the case, but then they also have "Six-pack Shops" which sell smaller quantities (and any bar can legally sell you up to two six-packs; bowling alleys that have bars were a favored place to get late-night booze IIRC). I think they have different hours for each. And then there are liquor stores which are actually run by the state, and where you can get your distilled alcohols, and I think wine just comes from the grocery store? (I was never clear on wine there.)

Anyway, just nitpicking. It does have some of the most bizarre liquor laws of anywhere I've ever been to. I can only pity the poor coddled European who might wind up in Pennsylvania, desiring a case of wine on a Sunday, or something similarly impossible.

Re:Applies to only drinkers?

[cliffski]

I'm English. The story is being blown out of all proportion. It sounds like maybe a dozen pubs in 3 or 4 towns in the whole country MAY be introducing it. London isn't even mentioned.
The chances of your average British pub introducing this for a lunchtme drink are absolutely ZERO. Theres a pub in the UK practically every 10 paces. Any law that would make it harder for a British person to have a pint in his pub would go down about as well as a law to ban firearms in the US.
It's a total non story.

Re:Answer: slashdot headline, misleading as usual

[InfoHighwayRoadkill]

I actually live just down the road from Yeovil. (or YeoVile). An aquiantance actually runs the main firm of bouncers in the town. He says that the fingerprint scanners started off in one of the clubs in town more or less as the owner is a gadget freak and just got a MS keyboard with fingerprint scanner. The club owner used it to get some free publicity in the local press. The regional press and tv picked it up and finally the story was on the main bbc news a few months ago. Governement has seen it and thought "Hang on a minute..."

Actually having your right index finger print taken in the clubs closed, non-government affilitated system is optional even in the bar that started it. YeoVile is a small town and the bouncers know all the main troublemakers personally by now. If someone comes in from out of town looking for trouble of course no system is going to stop them.

So all of this started out as a cheap publicity stunt by the owner of a small club in a small town and has got people the British government involved and now people all round the world are commenting on it... the guy must be laughing his head off.

Re:Interesting.

[sa1lnr]

We have prisons in the UK too. Only problem is that they are ALL full. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6072454.stm

Re:Interesting.

[BasilBrush]

The UK imprisons a greater percentage of it's population than any other European country. And yet it has more alcohol related crime than all the others too. So prison doesn't appear to be a great fix.

Re:Fingerprinting drinkers? WTF???

[vidarh]

You entirely miss the point. This is intended for prevention by denying known repeat offenders access to pubs. So it's more targetted at stopping persistent troublemakers that are known to cause problems when drunk.

I still don't like the fingerprinting bit - it seems like it's begging for someone to abuse it.

Re:Hmm...

[BasilBrush]

The Yeovil pilot is certainly real. It was on the BBC TV news when the scheme started. I saw it in action. The phony part of it is the "mandatory" and "national" suggestions.

How, exactly, would this work anyway? Are they proposing even longer queues to get into pubs, and mandatory security personnel at the doors of all licensed premesis? How would they determine if you've crept in (say, via the beer garden, many of which couldn't easily have access controlled without fundamental modification) without fingerprinting? If you went in to the garden, would you need to be rechecked every time you went back in? Maybe they'd need to fingerprint all customers as part of the sale, and reject if it didn't match one of their live entries - I can see that being popular with staff...

This system is for city centre or other drinking venues where troublemakers regularly go. The sort of place that already has doormen at the one or two available entrances.

Re:Interesting.

[redcane]

In my opinion, a far more interesting variation on the questionis "How would you classify operating a motor vehicle under the influence of fatigue clinically proven to impair the drivers ability?" Personally I think that people should be responsible for their actions, and they should be educated about potential pitfalls. The law widely varies in different jurisdictions as to what amount of intoxication is permissible when driving. And in some ways I believe that someone who doesn't harm anybody should not be penalised, even if they are behaving in a way that may increase their risk of causing harm. when you go down the road of penalising people for increasing the risk of an accident through intoxication, I see a logical evolution to other factors. e.g. If you didn't sleep 8 hours in the last 24 you can't drive. If you haven't done some kind of driver training in the last 12 months you shouldn't drive. If your not concentrating on the task at hand you shouldn't drive. Of course many of these other risk factors are harder to test for/enforce. Personally I think driver distraction causes many more accidents than statistics would have you believe, because drunk people are easily distracted. While I think people are generally not behaving wisely if they drive intoxicated, there are many people who drive too poorly when sober, but there is no legislation against driving like a twat.

actually THE highest

[lavaface]

The U.S> has the largest prison population (over 2 million) and the highest rate of prisoners per capita at 715 per 100,000. source: NationMaster

Re:Wow

[pjt33]

You might find that the typical slashdotter might go apeshit over ID cards, but you misrepresent the feelings of the English. Every single poll that's ever been done in the UK about ID cards has shown the majority to be in favour.

A poll a year ago found 50% support and 48% opposition. Okay, so it's a majority, but you must admit it's a slim one. Earlier in the year, a poll found 45% support, which isn't a majority.

an addendum to being "pissed"

[deft]

Just FYI for the non-brits, being "pissed" over there is drunk, not "pissed" as in angry in the states.

That may clarify what is a bit confusing as the slang differs.

Re:Interesting.

[f1055man]

Actually there were two, Australia and North America. More felons were sent to North America than Australia, but other people wanted to go to North America as well.

Re:Interesting.

[Mr. Slippery]

though the visible tattoo could be an effective deterrent as well.

Tattooing the face actually was a punishment in ancient China. That was getting off light, compared to the other common penalties of lopping off the nose, feet, genitals, or head. The Legalists of the Han dynasty were the original "tough on crime" crusaders.

Re:Interesting.

[Millenniumman]

What's interesting to note is that areas which respect the second amendment have less murders than areas with governments that ignore the Constitution and ban all guns.

A large percentage of murders are organized crime related, and there is no way to stop criminals with significant resources from accessing guns. Much of the rest of murders are crimes of passion, which in most cases don't require sophisticated weaponry.

What they really ask in the polls

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

I hope your comment was of the straight latter meaning, not a sarcastic reference to the former.

Actually, I question the methodology they use for the polls in the first place. The vast majority of those I've seen cited in the media are government-funded, and carried out by the kind of organisation one hires when one already knows the result required.

Having seen the full list of questions they asked in a couple of cases, it usually goes something like this:

1. Do you believe terrorism is a threat to UK security?
2. Do you believe fraudulent benefit claims represent a significant drain on the UK economy?
3. Do you believe immigrants working illegally take jobs away from unemployed British citizens?
4. Do you believe identity theft is increasing at a rate of 500% per year?
5. Do you believe the UK government should introduce identity cards?

What they fail to mention is that:

1. most of the terrorists in recent high profile attacks have used 100% legitimate identity documents [PDF];
2. no arguments have yet been presented by the government to show how the number of fraudulent benefit claims would actually be reduced in practice;
3. the existing mechanisms to track visitors on visas and illegal immigrants don't work well, so there's little reason to believe any similar but newer system will do any better;
4. the proposed National Identity Register represents a database of the total life history of each individual, and as such will be the single biggest target for identity thieves ever created;
5. the cost of all of this is likely to run to billions of pounds (and until a couple of weeks ago the government consistently refused to give any quantitative estimate of the total cost of the system to all parties, and even the 5.4 billion pound figure in that article was immediately challenged by other parties who put the likely cost several times higher);
6. pretty much no major government IT project in recent British history has come in even close to on-time or on-budget, and there have been very expensive failures when projects were scrapped after years of development to cut losses
7. the civil liberties implications of the measures proposed are pretty horrendous.

You show me a study that presents both the questions at the top of this post and the verifiable facts afterwards in a balanced way and then tells me the majority of the population wants ID cards, and I'll believe my failure to encounter a single person who speaks favourably of them is just a matter of moving in different circles. Until then, it's just lying with statistics, and you can conduct as many polls as you like but still you have no meaningful information about how the population as a whole would feel on the issue if it had a balanced knowledge of the potential advantages and potential risks.

In the UK "pissed" is also known as

[DiscoDave_25]

Over here in blighty we've a number of other terms for this state of inebriation. A few of them are below

drunk
mullered
wasted
trashed
beanoed
trolleyed
badgered
rat-arsed
ratted
tight
lashed

When out drinking on can be:
on the piss
out on the lash
on the badger
on the raz
having a couple of sherberts

and many many more...

Note that I've been all over the country and some of the slang is very localised. If anyone can contribute some more to the education of the site in expressing their state of disrepair...