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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."
Law! The cure to society's failures! That's what laws are for.
Laws built civilization, at reduced price.
Got a problem with something, just get together with some of your friends and write a law against it.
No need to address systemic issues. No need to worry about whether it's harmful to individuals. Human rights? But what about civilization? Laws are above you and me they're for the greater good.
Can I get a law. Cheers to that ol' chap Hammurabi. What greater gift to pass on to future generations than a bunch of laws? Better than trying to raise 'em up with values.
I am wondering how this will affect non-citizens of England, will U.S. or foreign visitors need to be fingerprinted as well and if so, that means that our fingerprints are in a foreign system, I am wondering how this info will be used, since the U.S. has demanded that the UK and all EU countries give the U.S. passenger data, will this info be used as a counter tactic to stop this practice.
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? Is it all electronic scans (the article made it sound as if it were)?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
In Edmonton, they have a little something called "Barwatch" that calls for (Voluntary per establishment) scanning of photo ID cards. I've submitted this a couple of times but it hasn't gotten to the front page just yet... http://www.hackcanada.com/canadian/freedom/barwatc h/barwatch.html
Not to stray too far off-topic, but the issue is a lot closer to home than you might have thought.
Well, the UK has always had new crazy, privacy-destroying laws and powers. I find the English completely irrational considering how they go apeshit at the thought of a national ID card, but let things pass like continuous camera surveillance, excessive powers to any government instance, etc. Ripe for abuse. Maybe it's an Anglo-Saxon mindset?
Continental Europe is different - they're a bit more strict on privacy laws. There's always a big stink made when some stuff like this happens, like when euro passenger data is shared with the US, or like when SWIFT Belgium was/is passing loads of info on financial transactions to the US (again).
The US on the other has one thing going for it: constitutional protections, and associated with that, pretty good transparency. Whenever there's a new law project that might touch constitutional protections, there's usually some people that will notice, and there's quite a bit more public debate about it. To the point that Europeans probably know more about privacy-related laws in the US than in their own country.
It mentions "alchohol-related crimes", but it seems to me that the only time you ever actually know that any particular crime was genuinely alchohol related is if you already know who the person that did it was, and it's only then that you realize that they are under the influence of alchohol. What do you need fingerprints taken beforehand for when every single time you'd be able to pin a crime on alchohol consumption you have the guilty party in custody anyways?
About the only good this might do is produce a sort of "scare tactic" effect, that might initially incline people to behave better, but I don't see this making a significant difference in the long run.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
I don't know about the cities in the 'States where it was implemented, but in Vancouver, BC, after a short period (less than 6 months) where business declined, patronage of bars and restaurants actually increased to higher than original levels. This is because the majority of people (~80%) in Vancouver don't smoke, and a lot of people were avoiding these places because of all the smoke in the air. I have to say, it's a real pleasure to have a beer in a pub and not go home smelling like an ashtray.
"Anyone that has ever gotten an idea based on any of my work and done something better with it-good for you."--J.Carmack
Pretty similar to any other countrys internal politics. If I had told you that for the last 5 years, the majority of political debate in Norway has been about the new opera building, you probably wouldn't believe me. It's still true, and it's like this everywhere. Once you have an outside perspective, you are more able to see how silly people can become over a non-issue.
Thanks for the generalization. Southern USA is a bit different. They usually are Ku-klux Klan members.
Surprise! The US is not the only country with a constitution. Nor is it the first country with a constitution. Nor does the constitution seem to help USians much, as the various political fractions interpret the constitution as inventively as christians interpret the bible.
As for transparency; I thought US was the country where standard political practice was bill-amendments, so that by calling the new law "Child Protection Act", and amend some minor law about mandatory ID-cards to it, everybody would vote for it, since nobody has time to read all the amendments, and we must protect our children.
Look, just because you can read about it in your newspaper, doesn't mean that everyone else in the world reads the same newspaper. The silly little bickerings you have about privacy-laws in the US, interests us about the same as you would consider the debate about Oslos new opera building interesting. More to the point, people in civilized democracies (such as most of Europe) mostly ignores american politics, except that they dislike Bush, and thought Clinton was a jolly good fellow.
Secondly, in the eyes of most people in civilized democracies, US politics has mostly been dominated by rabid right-wing capitalists, dictated by powerful companies, since at least the 1960s. It's possible we will follow, but at least untill now, we have managed to keep the battle up for a little longer. And we have privacy laws, even laws that work!
I won't call you anti smoking nazis, a little too harsh. However, I think that banning smoking in all resturants and particularly bars is too much government control. It's like this.. If you want a non smoking place to drink, then some enterprising person will start such a place. Then with this huge non-smoking crowd out there, they would flock to it.. leaving the smokers to their place in peace.. where the bar now empty because of the migration to non-smoking establishments will die from lack of buisness. Why do you have to ban it everywhere ? Many people do not like drinkers either, so to follow the smoking example we just ban alchohol in all resturants ? or do you have places where non drinkers can eat ?
waiting for ad.doubleclick.net
I used to live in Philadelphia, and they would always swipe my ID at the State Stores. I'm not sure if it was required that they do so though. Pennsylvania has some of the weirdest alcohol laws I've ever encountered, like how you couldn't buy beer in less then a case legally... if I recall correctly (though places in shitty areas did so anyway). Usually we would just drive over to Jersey to avoid the mess and the high State Store prices.
Cool art gallery, if you're into that sort of thing.
It was Hartlepool. They voted for H'Angus the monkey (Or at least the guy who wore the H'Angus suit as a mascot for the local football team) to become mayor on a campaign of providing a banana to every school child.
they should just implement a loyalty card like the supermarkets, save up get one free pint in 10, or save for 20 years and get a free liver harvested from a chinese worker sentanced to death for not making western consumer goods fast enough. People dont mind giving up their privacy for a tiny bribe. (except me it seems)
really, if all they are doing is registering you at a certain bar at a certain time, its no more an invasion of privacy as being caught on the cctv, having you car registed by ANPR (automatic number plate recognition) on the way in (data kept for 2 years) or using your card in or near the place. why all the panic?.
The thing is though, if it is going to stop the violent people from getting in, who is going to run the scheme? I mean it would only be 2 weeks before all the bouncers in the country are barred. Also can we bring in random breath testing for bouncers please, theres nothing quite as worrying as a pissed (drunk) bouncer wandering around.
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.
As to CCTVs, yes the British like them because it makes them feel less at threat from crime on the street, and that there will be less vandalism. And with good reason. Crime in the UK has fallen 44% since 1995, violent crime down 43%, and vandalism down 19%.
http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds/pdfs06/hosb1206.
Have you been out in a British town on a Saturday night?
Yes, but I can only think that I've managed to find the only town in England (London) that doesn't turn into a battleground, as in 12 years of doing so I've seen exactly one fight, that was between just two people, and the antagonist legged it before anything even slightly serious happened.
Perhaps I'm just lucky, as I have certainly heard stories, seen the "police eye view" TV shows, etc, but based on my own experience there simply isn't a problem. YMMV, and clearly does.
It's official. Most of you are morons.
In this world nothing is certain but death, taxes and flawed car analogies.
It is pretty much the only one with an unrestricted free speech clause, for example. Other countries restrict hate speech and can legally regulate the sale of violent media to children while the US constitution doesn't allow that.
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
Really? So where are all the non-smoking places to drink or eat in countries without these laws then? The problem is that these are social places - when you have a group with both smokers and non-smokers, the group will go to a single location, and that is far more often driven by what place is hot at the moment than any other concerns.
So this is a typical example of where free enterprise has completely failed a large group of people.
Banning alcohol is entirely different because it does not generally negatively affect those who don't drink. I never smoke and usually don't drink. I don't mind of anyone does either, but I absolutely hate being near someone who smokes. The stench is unbearable. These days I actually find myself walking in large curves around people smoking - and I don't care if they realise.
In any case, in several of the countries putting in place smoking bans, the bans have actually been put in place as a logical extension to employee health and safety regulations. If your laws don't allow exposing employees to chemicals with known longtime exposure risks without adequate protections, then why would it be logical to allow exposing them to consistent and unavoidable high concentrations of second-hand tobacco smoke, when we know it causes significant health risks?
And no, this is not about choice - employment laws in most countries specifically recognize that employees are usually at a disadvantage, and that there are always people in personal situations that doesn't give them a realistic choice.
According to the media though, everytime I go into the city centre on a Saturday night and come home alive I should be thanking the God of my choice for a lucky escape.
And that is why you're one of the countries in the world with the highest percentage of your population in prison, surpassing many oppressive dictatorships. Despite that you still have some of the highest crime rates in the world too...
Doesn't look like it's working too well.
All those schemes you've quoted are schemes which were once trialed as pilot schemes. You haven't mentioned the, no doubt, millions of pilot schemes which were never taken any further. This idea is obviously never going to get any further than the half a dozen pubs in the small town it's currently, optionally, being used.
For a start the majority of pubs don't have bouncers or door staff and it's obviously impractical in the extreme to be fingerprinted every time you go to the bar to get a drink, secondly there are thousands and thousands of pubs in the UK all within a 10 second walking distance if people thought they were going to be fingerprinted and fail the test at one pub they would simply go to another pub which wasn't implementing the scheme.
There are areas in most towns and cities which attract the majority of drink related violence, you can normally identify them by the huge number of horrible chain pubs with loud music, bouncers and very few seats all right next to each other, these pubs have one goal and one goal only and that is to sell as much booze as they can for as much as possible, they already have bouncers to deal with the violence so why would they want to place any further barriers to selling more people more booze ? Luckily most towns also have areas where pubs aren't run along such lines and these do not generally attract any violence at all except once in a blue moon so why would these pubs wish to inflict fingerprint checks for their regulars every time they buy a pint ?
More drunk pedestrians are killed by sober drivers than sober pedestrians are killed by drunk drivers.
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.
Would you feel the same about someone drunk operating a nuclear power plant? After all it is just another machine operated by someone who has been certified to know the dangers of alcohol impairing judgement. If not, then surely there is some median point where you consider it not a great enough risk to the public. What would that point be? Drunk while flying a plane? While driving an 18 wheeler?
The point that I'm trying to make is that there is some point at which we have to decide that drinking and operating a piece of machinery is forbidden so that we don't kill too many people in accidents. The difficult thing is justifying the point. We have to say that maybe 20 deaths per 100,000 people per year due to drunk driving (operating cranes, flying planes, operating nuclear plants, etc) is unacceptable. Then we have to legislate limits and fund the police to achieve our goals.
Btw, this idea doesn't just apply to drunk driving. Being too tired or being impaired in some other way will also follow this method. The implementation may vary and the setpoints may have different values, but the idea remains the same: keep accident deaths below some threshold. You could argue all night whether a person who was drunk/impaired in driving/flying/nuclear operating/etc. could have avoided an accident, but it is not relevant. The only relevant point is the threshold. If drunk driving deaths double in one year, the penalties will increase and the setpoints for BAC will lower. If the public gets the perception that drunk driving deaths are high then the penalties will increase and the setpoints for BAC will lower. If there are no significant deaths in drunk driving for a long time the limits will creep upwards and the penalties will decrease. This is because the system doesn't care about crime and punishment, it only cares about the threshold setting (which is adjusted by public anxiety over drunk driving).
"The US on the other has one thing going for it: constitutional protections, and associated with that, pretty good transparency. Whenever there's a new law project that might touch constitutional protections, there's usually some people that will notice, and there's quite a bit more public debate about it."
u st_try_voting_here.html
Some do notice, but apparently not enough. Just two examples of the effectiveness of "The US on the other has one thing going for it: constitutional protections, and associated with that, pretty good transparency. Whenever there's a new law project that might touch constitutional protections, there's usually some people that will notice, and there's quite a bit more public debate about it."
Just Try Voting Here: 11 of America's worst places to cast a ballot (or try)
http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/2006/09/j
Lie by Lie: Chronicle of a War Foretold: August 1990 to March 2003
http://www.motherjones.com/bush_war_timeline/
I won't even yet go into how rotted roofs in Houston (unrepaired because a certain governer would not release or mark funds for repairs of run down police stations) led to destruction of crime scene evidence that led to uncounted illegal or erroneous convictions of people, this under the watch of then gov geo bush. Or, how with zeal and zest he signed off on the executions orders for people because he has complete faith and trust in the judicial system.
Funny Slash image word: "canons"
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
And on the other hand, look at the bottom of the list... 10 nations with 0 imprisonments per 100,000 people!? How can that be? I am surprised to see Cuba, UAE, and Egypt there, I think of those as civilized nations. Do they have high execution rates? Do they just chop off your hand and set your free? Or do they simply let everybody run wild?
Damn, the Prison Industry CEO's must be moderating slashdot these days.
California sending 2,260 inmates to out of state prisons due to overcrowding. People need to see that we have a major prision overcrowding problem here in the states. Building more prisons is not the answer, unless of course spending a few billion more per year on inmate housing is a good idea.