Slashdot Mirror
UK Police To Publicly Shame Drunk Drivers On Twitter This Christmas
An anonymous reader writes Sussex and Surrey police plan on fighting drunk driving with the help of twitter this Christmas. The police say that they will tweet details of accused intoxicated drivers, including: where, when, and who was stopped throughout December. From the article: "They're cruising the streets for embarrassing tweets. It's no secret that every year, the number of people driving under the influence of alcohol shoots up around Christmas. As part of its yearly crackdown, police in Sussex and Surrey are taking to Twitter to document the alcohol-related arrests they make on the road. Each snippet mentions where and when the motorist was pulled over, but also, more importantly, their name if they're eventually charged. Those who were stopped last year aren't getting off lightly either; officers are reportedly putting up posters to show exactly where motorists were caught over the limit."
My knee-jerk reaction is to say, "good, fuck 'em."
Arrest records are public information, but we don't tweet out every one. Where do we set the line?
When you can just send someone off to the court of public opinion.
An arrest is not the same as a conviction. IANAL but I think this would be slander (and the police could be sued in civil court) if this happened in the USA.
If even the police can't refrain from publicly shaming people who have not been convicted (yet), then people need a way to clear their name.
Public shaming is a great tool of social pressure that will prove useful in enforcing conformism. Conformism = security.
Let's just hope this doesn't turn into something people think is cool...
I know it feels good for the public at large, feels like karmic justice, but it doesn't hinder offenders.
Having done a good deal of research into crime and punishment, it turns out that shaming punishments have no statistical impact on the chance they'll re-offend. Anyone who is even briefly ostracized from society will be at least as likely to turn to alcohol or drugs as they were before, and other potential impacts like losing their job or positions of respect further worsen the odds of recovery.
What does work for DUI cases is to provide access to rehab clinics followed by support organizations, though apparently not any of the -anonymous ones like AA or NA, which have a worse-than-nothing recidivism rate.
Would the EUs right to be forgotten come into play here?
Already been tried in the UK, and it didn't go well:
http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-eng...
As for the USA, I doubt that "embarrassing a drunk" could even be conceptualized.
I suspect that may be true in parts of the UK, haven't been there myself.
I'd be okay if they did this with convicted drunk drivers, but doing it with accused is not cool.
This is the exact same problem with the media (and police) talking about accused sexual predators, like the notorious Jian Ghomeshi case going on in Canada right now. The guy was crucified by the public social media lynch mob before he charged had even be levied. Is this what society has become? We demand justice before someone even has a chance in court?
because right before I'm about to do something I might regret, I stop and ponder, "Could this get me embarrassed on twitter?"
the number of people 'caught' driving under the influence of alcohol shoots up around Christmas.
The number of stops goes up as does the christmas overtime bill for the policy forces. Could there be a link.
I'd think that waiting for a conviction would be the legally responsible way forward but that wouldn't 'send the right message'. European right to be forgotten could trump this though.
shouldn't they be waiting for an actual conviction?
Yeah I know, not the US, just the backwards UK...
Not convicted? Interesting tactic... Who would ever think the authorities would engage in such practice?
Because cops are people too and are just as likely to do really stupid things.
Usually the department defends/covers up police stupidity. OR worse, arrests the innocent civilians because the cops are too stupid to tell the difference between someone making a threat and someone quoting a movie.
I sincerely hope that the goal is to work as some kind of deterrence. And sorry to say that, it fails as such. Punishment as a deterrence demands two things: First, that the crime is motivated by rational thought rather than emotion or instinct. And second that the culprit does indeed consider the chance to be caught to be a relatively big one.
For a proof of the first, see any kind of sexual crime, the related punishment and the lack of any kind of reduction in crime with increased fines or jail times. If anything, increased punishment led to more people not only sexually assaulting but outright killing their victim since it reduces the chance of being caught without increasing the punishment significantly anymore.
For a proof of the second, see copyright infringement, the ridiculous fines that are today attached to it and anything but a decline in it. With a near zero chance to get caught, nobody cares about punishment as deterrence.
Now combine this in case of someone whose ability to judge has been impaired by alcohol, which also usually puts his voice of reason to sleep in favor of the voice of his inner animal, and combine this with the amount of times these people did actually get away with drunk driving before.
In other words, the only thing this will net us is yet another chapter of the erosion of due process and "innocent until proven guilty" and all those other outdated fads from the past.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
3.2 seconds.
Idiots who are rich enough to afford the ticket will probably take it as a badge of honor, and/or vie for getting pulled over in the weirdest places.
I remember when they put breathalyzers in Australian pubs so people could check if they were legal to drive home... and then had to take them out again when people started having contests to see who could blow the highest BA levels before passing out.
"shaming" sounds like a punitive action. Last I checked, police are law enforcement. I'd have thought that a judge would be required for anything punitive.
I can already picture the requests pilling up on Google's servers...
Forget-me-YES.
How are we supposed to read these tweets if we are driving along with a beer in one hand?
Waterfox - a Firefox fork with legacy extension support, security updates and better privacy by default.
Brand them with a big "DUI" on their foreheads. While we're at it, we can come up with brands for pirates, adulterers, and thieves. Heck, maybe we can even bring back the old "rule of thumb"? My wife's been getting on my nerves lately . . .
I can't wait 'til the first time one of the people who's been shamed after being charged is found innocent in court. Unlike the US, England's courts take a very dim view of smearing someone's reputation unjustly.
I suspect a couple of nice, fat payouts in the wake of libel convictions will put a stop to this nonsense.
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
The difference is that newspapers from long ago and far away are far easier to get on the Internet than they were before the Internet. This means your misdeeds from well over a decade ago, from which you have been rehabilitated, are more likely to continue to haunt you no matter where you try to start over.
at least wait for them to be guilty and also the should ask for trail by jury and kick out anyone who read the twitter post per trail.
That's what happens all the time over here (in the US).
"Walls of Shame" are very popular in local newspapers. Mugshots and arrest records are public documents, so there's no real legal issue.
Then someone with means (or connections) gets shamed.
Stops pretty quickly after that.
Why is it my responsibility to use my money to get them to take care of a problem they created?
For the same reason it's your responsibility to use your money to take care of any other medical problem faced by another client of your health insurer. Substance dependence is a medical problem, and I was under the impression that public health insurance such as NHS existed to make sure the public's medical problems were solved. Otherwise you'll likely see people committing violent crime to pay for treatment, as illustrated in the film John Q.
Ever heard of internet bullying? If you get arrested for DUI you get hit with up to 100 pieces of mail advertising legal services, Ignition Interlock Devices, DUI school, etc. God forbid you try to keep this a private matter from anyone else living in your house who may check the mail in the 6 weeks following your arrest (note: not yet even a conviction).
If you are pulled over at .09, just .01 over the limit you are going to get as arrested and "tweet shamed" and someone driving at .29 BAC. Is it really necessary or fair to put a scarlet letter on someone? Just because we have a history of public shaming doesn't mean would should perpetuate it. After all, here in America we have a history of slavery and abuse (ask the Natives and the Africans) but we don't abduct and compel people against their will to clean our tables for the holidays just because there're more dirty plates than usual.
It's bad enough that your arrest records go public and that you will be fined VERY heavily and forced to lose your license, which leads to additional criminal activity if you drive while suspended. God forbid you lose your job.
Drunk drivers are people too. I'm not justifying it, just pointing out the obvious.
Is it just me, or have we now reached the point where people who drive drunk just aren't affected by 'external influences?'
Threat of a large fine doesn't stop them, nor does threat of jail, threat of loss of driving privileges or threat of loss of their vehicle.
Threat that they might injure or kill others, themselves or passengers doesn't influence their behaviour either.
So sure, embarrass them with a tweet, but will the risk of embarrassment really decrease drunks on the road? I think not...
Great, I assume the next thing in the pipeline is posting the when, where & name of officers accused of wrongdoing on twitter as well? I thought not.
First DUI conviction; license suspended for life. Second DUI, assuming the first was under this new law, and 10 years in prison. Mandatory. I bet the rate of drunk drivers goes down real fast. Third conviction life in prison no parole.
There won't be any libel convictions because the police will be tweeting that a person has been arrested for DUI which is true. The person had been arrested. If they leave out the arrested part and just say that X has been drinking and driving then they leave themselves open to a libel case once a judge tosses the charges.
if the charges are dropped or thrown out of court then the police must not only tweet a retraction they must pay to have it placed in all of the local daily newspapers, one retraction per single page of the paper with no other stories or advertising. If you are going to shame someone then your errors are going to have to be broadcast more publicly.
It may sound mad, but I hate Twittarse as much as I hate drunken driving. The UK police should not be wasting UK taxpayers' money fucking about with such nonsense. Don't they have more important work to be getting on with? The idiots behind this wheeze should be sacked.
Yes, it's almost like they're addicted.
So if I don't know... Prince Harry is pulled over and is found to be over the limit, his name will be tweeted?
Somehow I don't believe that will happen.
Driving under the influence hasn't stopped. But I'll let you all in on a little secret - once autonomous vehicles are the norm there will be no more DUI charges. And that will reduce the need for traffic enforcement cops too.
Fear of punishment work well for dogs and other simple minded creatures. Humans take it as merely another hurdle to overcome in doing what they want.
We really should have stopped this pavlovian plan some time ago, but it persists as people love to treat each other like dogs.
BS! An arrest is not a conviction. I was arrested for DUI (even after blowing a 0), taken to the station, blood-tested 0 there, and was STILL charged. Had to spend a lot of money on a lawyer to get the bogus charges dropped (they have about 20 different ways to phrase "driving whilst intoxicated", and each one carries a charge). Still shows up on my record and will for years (even though the state dropped the charges). I can only imagine if my name and picture were also smeared all over the media.. I'd probably never get a job again, due to police officers' overzealous incompetence.
This sounds like one of those great ideas often had by people who have spent no time on Twitter at all. People on Twitter seem to be quite happy to shout to the world opinions most of us thought went extinct decades, or even centuries ago. If you don't mind occasionally creating a new burner account, there are no filters, and pretty much anything goes.
So they are essentially going about this entirely backwards. If they really want to shame people, they should go through the drunk's Twitter feeds and send copies of some of their more offensive stuff to places people care more about. For instance, send it to their parents, or post it on their cars. Bring their crap into meatspace.
Public shaming is how we destroy people, not encourage good behavior.
If you want to end DUI, end alcohol culture. That requires fixing social problems and giving people something to live for.
Of course, doing that will require more systematic and structural efforts.
Futurist Traditionalism
I'm not on Twitter and I don't look at it. This seems like a complete waste of time.
No facebook, twitter or any of that shite. I barely have time for Slashdot.
And the point? The crime has been been committed, the damage done. The police are really promoting vigilantes to punish offenders via ostracisation. Who thinks depriving offenders of social support is going to reduce their abuse of alcohol? Their abuse may start because everyone else is doing it, but removing social reinforcement doesn't change their bad habits. As countries start implementing their version of America's "Meaghan's law", politicians claim they're not endangering the lives of criminals. But as people are named and shamed for more crimes, it is easier for vigilantes to pick a target and escalate the social punishment to stalking and assault. Look at what is happening to homosexuals in Russia; this is how it starts.
This seems to be the modern version of the Stocks. Public shame and display of those people daring to break the law. In the US at least, this should be considered cruel and inhumane punishment. Though it would take a decade to see the light of day in court, and yeah people back then didn't want to do away with the stockades either.
Does the UK have any laws regarding overly cruel punishment?
Sure, arrest records are publicly records but not normally without a request (I.E. Not posted on a public facing web site until a conviction) at least in the US. A few counties in the US that have similar policies regarding putting mug shots for arrests on web sites may be under scrutiny for cruel punishment soon (my hope at least), primarily due to people taking advantage of the data.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
Well, there is a probability that this turns into a badge of honour. Much like how short cropped hair went from a loss of identity to identification of toughness. There's a tipping point somewhere.
not that you can actually search for these embarrassing photos
you'd have to be a follower to the UK police twitter feed, and who wants to admit to that?
Article says 'conviction', Summary says 'accused'.
There's a difference people. One is worth protesting over.
Arrest records are public information
Not in the UK. This is a blatant violation of the Data Protection Act and also goes against everything the European Court of Human Rights has decided on that matter.
OS Reviews: Free and Open Source Software
It's not that simple, especially in the UK. Even in Canada, the truth isn't an absolute defense against libel.
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
When has deterrence ever worked? The people who do this will always do this. The people who drive technically over the limit, but there tolerance is high so they don't feel it, will get inappropriately shamed.
This will do nothing to solve the problem. But, it will create a sense that this sort of shaming is ok. Over time, it will be applied to other lesser crimes. Such is the slippery slope.
Not really surprised this happened in the UK though.
Or is it convicted?
Shitty summary brings shitty comments., Get better editors.
.. would be to tweet the names of those convicted but that wouldn't happen in time for Christmas which means no hard hitting impact on the Christmas drivers.
I think we need to be careful here! While there are public records of conviction, someone interested would have to go through the trouble of looking them up. While if on twitter we have a total different social dynamic.
We all know how easily mobs form and act irrationally.
I am wondering: If I got convicted and this got tweeted, a mob formed in front of my housed and burned it down. Could I sue Met Police for inciting violence? Cause that was what the authorities did during the last London Riots.
It feels to me that public naming and shaming is a bit like putting people into stocks on the market square where every self-righteous bastard can then make themselves feel better and at the same time can get rid of a bit of aggression.
Just shows again, the the government does not understand social media!
I guess that's fine, as long as you can sue them for defamation if you win in court.
This came up a while ago with another police service and was blogged on by one of the UK's foremost data protection experts. The campaign was slapped down by the UK's privacy regulator, the Information Commissioner's Office.
In addition to the unfair implication of guilt; "personal data" (identifiable; relating to a living individual) which fits into the category of "sensitive" (in this case; pertaining to criminal offences, convicted or alleged) is subject to strict conditions for how it can be used. As the police cannot claim that tweeting is "necessary for the prevention or detection of crime"; their processing of this sensitive personal data is in breach of DPA, regardless of whether the allegation of drink driving is correct.
"Life is pain Highness. Anyone who says otherwise is selling something"
Westly, The Princess Bride
Wrong. Libel is in a permanent form. So speech, if recorded, counts.
Defamation is an umbrella term covering both slander and libel.
Why do you pretend to be an authority on the legal system of a country you've never visited & couldn't point to on a map?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."