Boris and the sobriety test

26-Sep-2011 - Last updated on 11-Mar-2017 at 21:46 GMT

Chase: sobriety test doesn't add up

Writing in the Daily Telegraph on the 19th September, London Mayor Boris Johnson laments the number of violent offenders who don’t get sent to prison, and calls for the introduction of a “sobriety test” for all persons convicted of drink-related violent offences.

The basic idea is that these offenders should attend at a police station twice a day and be given a breathalyser test — and if alcohol is detected, be hauled before the courts and sent down! His assistant laments the fact that the Ministry of Justice has vetoed this proposal because they are “resistant to new ideas”. Or perhaps just wacky ones!

How many people commit ‘alcohol-related violent offences’ each year is difficult to discover. Most of the statistics on violent crime are drawn from the British Crime Survey and estimate the number of alcohol-related violent offences, not offenders.

However in 2007 a report written by Susan Donkin and Daniel J Banks entitled ‘Victims and Offenders of Night-time Economy Violence’ focussed on just one police authority area, the West Midlands. The statistics showed that there were 9,000 alcohol-related violent offences committed around licensed premises in the West Midlands in 12 months, of which 4,127 were detected.

The detected offences were committed by 3,633 unique offenders. Suppose we apply Boris’s remedy to these offenders, this would involve 3,633 people attending at a police station, and being tested twice a day, every day for, say, one year: 3,633 x 2 x 365 = 2,652,090 tests.

Bear in mind, this is just alcohol-related violent offences in the night-time economy, not overall, and just in one police authority area we are talking 2.6 million “sobriety tests”. There are 42 police forces in England and Wales.

Boris quotes his own statistics: in the 12 months to March 2011 there were 16,477 violent offenders who didn’t go to prison in London alone. Boris simply assumes they were all drunk and would like them all subjected to the sobriety test. OK Boris, let’s do the math: 16,477 x 2 x 365 = 12,028,210 tests – that’ll keep the boys in blue busy!

But never fear! Boris wants to charge them all £1 per test – that’s a cool £12 million – and how many Boris-bikes would that buy? This proposal has to rank alongside Tony Blair’s proposition that drunken offenders should be marched to cash machines for sheer impracticality.

It is reported that Boris has given up alcohol for the duration of the London Mayoral election. The sobriety test proposal clearly proves the dangers involved in changing the habits of a lifetime!

Paul Chase is director and head of UK compliance at CPL Training.