Every few weeks a sheriff's department truck pulls off along Bell Rd. near my house and unloads a group of people wearing vests proclaiming, "I am a drunk driver." The vests are mandated by legislation that became law two years ago.
The idea is to shame those arrested on a first offense of driving under the influence so that they don't do it again. Under the law, Tennessee offenders will have to spend at least one day in jail, followed by three eight-hour cleanup shifts. The previous minimum sentence for driving under the influence was 48 hours in jail.
When it began, Sheriff Daron Hall was opposed to the move, telling the Washington Post, "At the end of the weekend, we're going to have a person who has picked up a lot of litter but is still addicted to alcohol."
Many other sheriffs in Tennessee didn't like the law either. According to a WPLN report on the law, "Sheriffs say the shaming law costs more than jail time because officers are paid overtime to work weekends. That’s when offenders are required to do the litter pickup. Hall estimates the law will cost the state $2 million this year (2006) and $200,000 in Davidson County alone."
Even the group Mothers Against Drunk Drivers (MADD) doesn't think shaming is a strong deterrent to drunk driving and believes that jail time is more effective.
With no way of telling whether the program is effective -- we can't know if someone didn't do something -- we have to ask ourselves if this sentence meet society's needs or if it is simply designed to make politicians look tough on crime.
Drunk driving is a problem in need of a solution. Humiliating people won't solve it and such actions say that, as a society, we value pettiness over corrections. Vests won't cure alcoholism and jail time and/or driving restrictions are likely to be more effective against those with bad judgments than parading them in front of the community as political trophies.
This is a bad law that produces bad outcomes and it should be repealed.
- Jim Grinstead
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