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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."
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.
It's probably just more leverage to encourage people not to drive drunk.
Agreed but they had better not make any mistakes and accuse someone who does not subsequently get convicted. While it is hard to see how someone arrested for drunk driving would be not convicted they do have a history of mistakes like this. A few years ago they busted an online child pornography ring and then went around and named people whose credit cards were used without stopping to think that some of those cards were stolen and used fraudulently.
I'm all in favour of doing what we can to stop drunk driving but deliberately naming and shaming people before they have a conviction is dangerous at best and just plain wrong if those people are not found guilty.